Mothers, Women, Taboos at the Locarno Film Festival 2024

The 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival presented an eclectic programme of films, covering a wide range of subjects and themes.

There are, however, some recurring themes that are addressed in several films on the Swiss festival programme, such as the theme of AI and digital technology.

“Another obvious theme is the conversation around feminist female identity in the past and the different versions of that identity in the present,” Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said recently. THR.

Several films presented at Locarno show women who behave with their children in a way that goes beyond traditional images of caring mothers. For example, the second feature-length fiction film by the Austrian author of Iraqi origin Kurdwin Ayub Moonwhich had its world premiere in competition at the festival, includes a scene in which a mother talks to her sister about her young child in a way that may make viewers uncomfortable.

The Locarno International Competition programme also includes two films that focus on mothers and their feelings towards their families, presented in a very different light from the more traditional depictions of loving mothers who never experience difficulties.

Concrete example: the new film by Spanish filmmaker Mar Coll, a psychological thriller Hello Marie (Mothers don’t do it), which sparked heated debate after its world premiere at Locarno with its exploration of primal anxiety and motherhood guilt.

“Maria, a promising young writer and new mother, comes across a frightening headline: a French woman drowned her 10-month-old twins in the bathtub,” reads the Locarno website, which also has a clip available here“This horrible act seizes Maria’s imagination, becoming an obsession. Why did she do it? From that moment on, the specter of infanticide hangs over Maria’s life as a haunting possibility.”

In a director’s note, Coll explains his film, which is an adaptation of Katixa Agirre’s book Mothers don’t do it and stars Laura Weissmahr and Oriol Pla: “I explore the troubling figure of the mother full of regrets. Prisoner of a feeling of guilt and social incomprehension, she must face the fear of her own monstrous condition.”

During a Q&A with the directors and actors in Locarno, Coll told the audience how the film came about. When she started thinking about her third film, “I was with a 15-month-old baby, and [co-writer] Valentina [Viso] “I already had two daughters,” she recalls. “We talked a lot about our role as mothers, we had long conversations and we shared our frustrations and our joys. We knew that the experience of motherhood was very important for our lives and that it was cinematic. At that time, I read this book…