original title:
Maternity Blues
directed by:
cast:
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
set design:
costume design:
producer:
Fulvia Manzotti
production:
distribution:
world sales:
country:
Italy
year:
2011
film run:
95'
format:
35mm - colour
release date:
27/04/2012
festivals & awards:
Four different women, linked by a common crime: infanticide. Inside a prison psychiatric hospital, they spend their time serving their sentence which is mainly internal: that feeling of guilt for an action that has wiped out their lives. From this forced co-habitation, which in turns generates suffering from seeing one’s guilt reflected in others, friendships are born, fragmented confessions emerge and some form of partial comfort arises, which never fully consoles but which makes these women look like guilty innocents. Clara, torn by accepting the forgiveness of her husband, who has rebuilt his life in Tuscany, bears the effects of a seemingly normal existence. The passionate and straighttalking Eloisa keeps having confrontations with the others – but her cynicism is only skindeep. Rina, a teenage mother, drowned her baby girl in the bath in some sort of euthanasia. Vincenza, despite her religious faith, will be the only one to commit a final act against herself. She has two other children, on the outside, and for them she fills pages of letters which will never be sent.