Andrea Testa is an Argentinian-born filmmaker. She made her feature documentary debut with 2016’s “Pibe Chorro.” Her 2016 feature film “The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis,” co-directed with Francisco Márquez, was awarded as Best International Film at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema. The film was part of the Un Certain Regard program at the Cannes Film Festival and the Horizontes Latinos (Latin Horizons) program at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.
“Mother-Child” was scheduled to screen at the 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival. A digital version of the fest has been organized due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Mother-Child” will screen in Hot Docs Festival Online, which will launch May 28 and is geo-blocked to Ontario, Canada. More information about the program and how to tune in can be found here.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
AT: “Mother-Child” listens to the testimonies of young women, kids, and teenagers that are going through difficult maternities in a poverty-environment. Their voices and gazes teach us something about the world, its injustices, and the forms of violence that affect the bodies of these women, even as children.
I think it’s a film about women surviving — a film that raises a question about their possibility of making a decision autonomously in a country where abortion remains illegal, unsafe, and clandestine.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
AT: Filmmaking, to me, is a way to unravel urgencies and injustices — the things that outrage me and won’t leave my mind or my body. Although the project of the film started before the peak of the feminist movement in my country, I do believe it’s a contribution to that call. In addition to trying to portray maternity and abortion in the most vulnerable sectors of society, each story allows us to see and feel the fear they feel, which is a common fear of something happening to us. It’s a fear that all women can relate to — and the fear of death is very closely felt.
I didn’t realize this at the beginning, but I think with this film I was seeking to visualize the violent wounds that male chauvinism and patriarchy leave on these women and young girls.
At first, the only thing I was sure of was that I wanted to listen to these young women from the popular sectors. The public hospital became a place of gathering for them since that’s where the most vulnerable and poor sectors go — given that they don’t have health insurance — and where the interventions on their bodies become painfully concrete. They go to the hospital to give birth, and they also get there almost dead as a consequence of unsafe abortions.
W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?
AT: I’m interested in knowing what happens to the people who are alien to this reality due to differences in social class, privilege, and cultural or territorial rights. I’m eager to see what moments of the film stress them. I’d like to know how deeply they empathize with these girls’ lives.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
AT: The first big challenge was to explain the movie we wanted to make to the health team and the authorities in the hospitals. Without their support, we had no movie. The work we did along with the team — a vast majority being women in the health sector — was key to establish trust and to set the ethical, political, and sensitive limits of the film.
Once we had the institutional clearances, the challenge became a question of how were we going to shoot this film. At that moment, the entire team was committed to thinking about the movie in a framework that would look after the girls rather than abuse the power of the cinematographic mechanism.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
AT: We sent the project of the movie to the Film Institute in Argentina. The application folder contained, among other things, a script we had written after a self-financed period of research. The selection process was suspended by the neoliberal government we had at that moment in Argentina: a government that didn’t believe that culture was a priority. Well, neither culture, health, education, nor any human right. So during those years, the Film Institute complied with these policies.
While we waited for a resolution, we got the clearances for shooting from the hospitals, so we decided that the movie couldn’t wait. With some resources we had, along with the contributions of many colleagues, we managed to undertake the first phase of the shooting.
Later on, we got the help from the Film Institute and we were able to return all the money they had lent us and to undertake the next phase.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
AT: I never dreamt about becoming a filmmaker, but I used to dream of making movies as a manifestation that may change the world. I still ask myself what was it that made me a filmmaker: was it my first documentary that no festival selected but that had an amazing reach in my country, or was it my first fiction movie that premiered in Cannes? I ask myself if what makes me a filmmaker isn’t to fight for a better world through cinema.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
AT: When I was a student, most of the teachers would repeatedly say that we have to know the rules first to be able to break them. I would disagree with that idea because I didn’t believe rules applied to art.
The best advice I got was during my adolescence. A literature teacher gave it to me. She was quite old and dyed her hair pink. From day one, she taught us to break with everything — that’s the only way our emancipated voices can emerge.
W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?
AT: It’s hard to make a piece of advice universal because I believe each woman, in each part of this world, is different and the contexts are, too.
The other day, on an Instagram Live, I heard a trans woman saying that the worst thing that happens to us as women is the idea that an ideal woman actually exists. That’s what we fight against every day, in our beds, in our homes, on the streets, on images. In our diversity lies our power. That’s how we can fight the image they expect us to uphold. We must fight for new voices to arise, for all the voices and for all the gazes in the world.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
AT: Today, I can name two films. First, Lucrecia Martel’s “La Ciénaga,” since it marked [a shift in] Argentina’s cinema. Her filmmaking is a benchmark from which to think what kind of cinema is being produced in the country.
María Silvia Esteve’s “Silvia” moved me a lot. It’s an archive documentary made out of family recordings of the director. She’s trying to rebuild — with a lot of affection, pain, contradiction, and blanks — the life of Silvia, her mother. Sylvia died before her daughter finished the documentary. The story of the film starts there, and I can’t stop thinking that this story is a profound surrender to love that leads us throughout the cyclical chains of genre violence.
W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?
AT: In Argentina, we are under preventive isolation, so I have to escape my four-year-old daughter to be able to work a little bit. We take turns with my companion, but her needs keep us by her side all day. She has her fears and gets bored.
I’m watching a lot of animated films with her while I check my phone and read about the horrible things happening in the penitentiary system in Argentina, where the state doesn’t ensure health, food, and sanitary prevention to the inmates. I also see the struggle lead by the health workers asking for medical supplies and security measures to guarantee safety in their jobs. And I read, with much anger and pain, the nonstop news about the growth of genre violence and femicides in this context.
I also get a lot of calls, every two days, from the girls in the film asking for some help: diapers, food, advice, care. I can’t stop thinking about hunger — about them and everyone else suffering from it.
