Mitevska cowrote the script together with Goce Smilevski and Elma Tataragić and she also made an earlier documentary about Mother Teresa. She said that the story of Mother Teresa is one that growing up in North Macedonia she encountered throughout her life. The script mixes fiction with the true life story of Mother Teresa’s founding of her new order.
The film opens in August 1948 in Kolkata, India, where Teresa, Mother Superior of the convent of the Sisters of Loreto, played by Noomi Rapace, is waiting for the letter that will finally give her permission to leave her monastery and create a new order to work with the very poorest in India. Mother Teresa is haunted by the poverty and suffering she sees everywhere around her.
She believes she has received a call from God and has been waiting for years for the Vatican to agree to her request to found her order. Just as it seems her prayers have been answered she is faced by a difficult dilemma when her closest associate in the monastery falls pregnant and causes Mother Teresa to question her faith as well as her love for her sister nun. Mother Teresa is a harsh, strict disciplinarian, as we see in her interactions with the nuns she rules over in the monastery but at the same time she feels strongly she is a mother to her flock.
The film’s title Mother obviously refers to both Mother Teresa and motherhood that her fellow nun Agnieszka played by Sylvia Hoeks is both embracing and struggling with guilt about her betrayal of her vows that led to the pregnancy. Agnieszka decides to have an abortion and Mother Teresa, who feels betrayal as her love for Agnieszka is obvious and at the same time needs Agnieszka to take over as head of the monastery if she is to depart for her new order, is flung into a moral dilemma.
The drama over the seven days before Mother Teresa leaves the monastery as she struggles with her faith and questions whether her new order may just be vanity, give the film a strong dramatic tension. Rapace as Mother Teresa and Hoeks as Agnieszka are the two main protagonists and the tension between them is played out with great skill and passion by the two actresses.
Mitevska said she was actually able to speak to members of the monastery who knew Mother Teresa when she made her documentary and their stories and experiences informed the script, although the actual story of the struggle between Mother Teresa and Agnieszka is fictional. The film has already been sold widely internationally and is sure to enjoy a good festival run. It should also enjoy a good run with Catholic organisations for while the film tells a controversial story it approaches the life of Mother Teresa with respect and understanding.
Click HERE for the FNE TV interview with the director.
Mother (North Macedonia, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, India)
Directed by Teona Strugar Mitevska
Main Cast: Noomi Rapace, Sylvia Hoeks, Nikola Ristanovski
Produced by Sisters and Brother Mitevski
Coproduced by Entre Chien et Loup, Frau Film, Rainy Days, Raging Film
Supported by the North Macedonia Film Agency, the Swedish Film Institute, the Danish Film Institute, the Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles, Film i Vast
