For protagonist Margherita, there is very little distinction between fiction and reality. As a director, she works on a set all day, orchestrating fake labor strikes and coaching inept actors. Her vision as an artist also seeps into her everyday life. MIA MADRE lets us into Margherita’s life and into her mind. The film intertwines everyday occurrences with scenarios from her imagination, sometimes funny and sometimes macabre.

Margherita’s turn inward is sparked by her mother’s illness and her daughter’s distance. The film does little to let the audience know when Margherita has slipped from reality and into one of her musings, but its the uneasy transition that most exemplifies the rattled mind of a woman being pulled a hundred different directions.

MIA MADRE director Nanni Moretti stated recently in an interview,

“Characters in my movies go through crises. Everybody in real life, and similarly movie characters, goes through crises. I am interested in describing those moments since they show one’s true character; truth emerges during a crisis.”

However, in the film, Moretti does not explicitly tell us the truth. Margherita is both fraught and emotionally distant from what is happening around her, opting instead for a world of imagination. Other characters chastise her for her aloofness and her demanding nature, yet we rarely see this side of her. What Moretti presents instead are impressions of who Margherita was and who she might be without her mother.

— Diana Martinez, Film Streams Education Director