Maternité : le grand saut

A letter to Nikola

2021

As a letter to her son, the filmmaker testifies her experience as a photographer aboard the Aquarius, a ship that rescued 29,523 people in the Mediterranean between 2016 and 2018.

(M)Other

2019

Being mother is the most natural thing in the world. Or so it seems. Yet the demands on women with children have rarely been as overloaded and contradictory as they are in today’s Western world. Promises of happiness are often followed by disadvantages, excessive demands and feelings of guilt. The mother has become an artificially glorified ideal, which nevertheless is often legitimized by the „nature of the woman“. We live in a time when three people could claim to be the same child’s mother: egg donors give their genes to beget children, surrogate mothers deliver babies which they give away immediately after birth, and men raise children by themselves – without a woman at their side. Hence the question arises: What makes a human being a real mother?

Eu Deveria Estar Feliz

2023

PINK BULLET

2023

Mulher Não Tem Graça

2024

Mater Amatisima

2017

Given the fetishizing and normalizing character that is given to motherhood in patriarchy in order to perpetuate the social order, do we truly choose to be mothers? Why is care, of fundamental vital labor, presupposed as an especially appropriate task for women?

Il rischio di vivere

1977

The Midwife

2017

Claire is a midwife and has devoted her life to others. At a moment when she is preoccupied by the imminent closure of the maternity clinic where she works, her life is further turned upside down when Béatrice, her father's former mistress, turns up on the scene. Béatrice is a capricious and selfish woman, Claire's exact opposite.

The Rye Horn

2023

Maria is a shellfisherwoman and midwife in a small village in the Illa de Arousa in 1970s Galicia. After an unexpected event, she is forced to flee to Portugal.

Mother, May I?

2023

Emmett enters into a nightmarish game of therapy with his wife Anya, who has inexplicably taken on the persona of his estranged and recently-deceased mother.

A Happy Event

2011

She drove me into a corner, then forced me to go beyond my limits. She made me confront the absolute: love, sacrifice, tenderness, abandonment. She dislocated me, transformed me. Why didn't anyone warn me? Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this?" Un heureux événement, or an intimate view of motherhood, sincere and with no taboos.

Mamífera

2024

Lola (40) enjoys a happy life until an unforeseen pregnancy throws her plans into disarray. Resistant to motherhood and confronted by societal expectations, Lola and her boyfriend, Bruno, deal with the situation. As Lola confronts her inner fears about the repercussions of not embracing motherhood, she embarks on a quest for answers. Unexpectedly, Bruno reveals his desire to become a father, adding further tension and complexity to Lola's search for clarity about her future amidst pressure to conform to societal norms.

Australia

2016

Helena, a woman in her early 40's, is obsessed with getting pregnant. After failing her last try, her neighbors get back from the hospital with their new born baby. Helena breaks in to their house when they´re gone, steals the baby monitor and starts listening to what happens next door.

Odayaka

2012

Saeko and Yukako live together in a small apartment complex in Tokyo. After the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, both live in a state of unease. Saeko, who is in a divorce, is worried that her daughter is exposed to radiation. Yukako is also afraid of radiation and tries to convince her husband to move. The two become friends after Yukako tries to save Saeko after a suicide attempt.

That Mothers Might Live

1938

That Mothers Might Live is a 1938 American short drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann. The short is a brief account of Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis and his discovery of the need for cleanliness in 19th-century maternity wards, thereby significantly decreasing maternal mortality, and of his struggle to gain acceptance of his idea. Although Semmelweis ultimately failed in his lifetime, later scientific luminaries advanced his work in spirit like microbiologist Louis Pasteur, who provided a scientific theoretical explanation of Semmelweis' observations by helping develop the germ theory of disease and the British surgeon, Dr. Joseph Lister who revolutionized medicine putting Pasteur's research to practical use. In 1939, at the 11th Academy Awards, the film won an Oscar for Best Short Subject (One-Reel).