05/07/2019 - Bolzano-born documentary filmmaker's first fiction film, focused on a religious center for young mothers and produced by dispàrte, Vivo Film, Campo Cine and Rai Cinema, is ready

After two years of development between Italy and Argentina, and the shoot in Buenos Aires that began in April 2018, it is ready to take flight: Maternal [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Maura Delpero
film profile] is the first fiction film from Maura Delpero, the Bolzano-born director who has signed several documentaries and short films over the years. Her documentary Signori professori premiered at the Torino Film Festival in 2008 while Nadea e Sveta, after winning the Cipputi award in Torino in 2014, won the award for Best Film on human rights at Uruguay International Film Festival, one of the most prominent film festivals in all of Latin America.

Maternal, her first project for a fiction feature film, is co-produced by Argentina, the capital of which Buenos Aires is where Maura Delpero got her formation in dramaturgy and screenwriting. The film is in fact produced by dispàrte from Alessandro Amato and Luigi Chimienti, Vivo Film from Gregorio Paonessa and Marta Donzelli and Campo Cine from Diego Lerman and Nicolás Avruj, in collaboration with RAI Cinema, with the contribution of MiBAC and the support of the Lazio region, Ibermedia, INCAA and IDM Südtirol – Alto Adige Film Fund & Commission. The script for Maternal was one of ten selected at the Berlinale Script Station in 2015, and the year after, the project received the ARTE International Prize at the Europe - Latin America Co-production Forum of the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Today the film is a potential candidate in various sections of summer festivals such as Venice, Locarno or Toronto.

Following her vocation for a realist cinema, Maura Delpero has focused her attention on Hogar, an Italo-Argentinian religious center for young mothers, a paradoxical place in which the early motherhood of young women coexists with the vow of chastity of the sisters who have welcomed them, between strict rules and Christian love. Sister Paola is a young sister who has just arrived in Buenos Aires from Italy to finish the novitiate and take her vows. Lu and Fati, both seventeen years old, are children brusquely transformed into mothers. These three different women will affect each other’s lives and their relationship with motherhood.

The cast includes Lidiya Liberman (seen in Marco Bellocchio’s Blood of My Blood [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marco Bellocchio
film profile] in 2015), Renata Palminiello, Denise Carrizo, Agustina Malale, Marta Lubos, Isabella Cilia. The cinematography is by Soledad Rodriguez, the editing by Ilaria Fraioli and Luca Mattei. International sales are handled by French company Charades.

(Translated from Italian)