''Mother'' ( es, Madre) is a 2019 Spanish-French

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...

directed by

Rodrigo Sorogoyen Rodrigo Sorogoyen del Amo (born 16 September 1981) is a Spanish film director and screenwriter. He won the Goya Award for Best Director and the Goya Award for Best Original Screenplay for '' The Realm''. He was previously nominated for the Goya ...

and co-written by

Isabel Peña Isabel Peña Domingo (born 1983) is a Spanish screenwriter. She often works in tandem with Rodrigo Sorogoyen. Biography Born in 1983 in Zaragoza, she became a fan of classical cinema when she was very young. She earned a degree in ''Comunicac ...

. The film is based on the 2017 short film of the same name directed by Sorogoyen. It stars

Marta Nieto Marta Nieto Martínez (born 31 January 1982) is a Spanish actress. Biography Marta Nieto Martínez was born on 31 January 1982 in Murcia Murcia (, , ) is a city in south-eastern Spain, the Capital (political), capital and most populous ...

, Jules Porier and

Àlex Brendemühl Àlex Brendemühl i Gubern (born 27 November 1972) is a Spanish-German actor. Born in Barcelona to a Spanish mother and a German father, he has appeared in more than 60 films and television shows since 1995. Brendemühl played the lead role of ...

. The film received three nominations at the

34th Goya Awards The 34th Goya Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences (AACCE), honored the best in Spanish films of 2019 and took place at the Palacio de Deportes José María Martín Carpena in Málaga on 25 January 20 ...

, including

Best Actress Best Actress is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organisations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actresses in a film, television series, television film or play. The first Best Actress awar ...

for

, her first Goya nomination and

Best Adapted Screenplay This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...

for

and

Plot

Ten years ago, Elena received a call in which Ivan, her six-year-old son, told her that he was lost on a beach in France and that he could not find his father. It was the last thing he knew about him. Now Elena lives on that beach, works as a manager in a restaurant and is starting to leave that dark tunnel where she stayed anchored all this time.

Cast

as Elena * Jules Porier as Jean *

as Joseba *

Anne Consigny Anne Consigny (; born 25 May 1963) is a French actress who has been active since 1981. She received a César Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in the film ''Not Here to Be Loved'' (2005). She is also known for her role as Claude in t ...

as Léa *

Frédéric Pierrot Frédéric Pierrot (born 17 September 1960) is a French actor. He has appeared in more than 120 films and television shows since 1986. He starred in the film '' Tell Me I'm Dreaming'', which was screened in the Un Certain Regard (, meaning ...

as Grégory

Release

''Mother'' was the opening film for the

Seville European Film Festival The Seville European Film Festival (SEFF; es, Festival de Cine Europeo de Sevilla, links=no) is an annual film festival dedicated to European cinema held in November in Seville, Spain, since 2004. The festival is an initiative of the Instituto ...

(SEFF) in 2019. The film was released in cinemas in Spain on November 15, 2019. It competed in the Orizzonti Section at the

76th Venice International Film Festival The 76th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 28 August to 7 September 2019. Film director Lucrecia Martel was appointed as the President of the Jury. '' The Truth'', directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, was selected to open the f ...

Reception

Box office

''Mother'' grossed $0 in the United States and Canada, and a worldwide total of $969,100.

Critical response

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film holds a rating of 76 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Ryan Lattanzio from

Indiewire IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Holl ...

gave the film a B writing that the film "turns out to be the least twisted, and most empathetic, entry in the damaged mother movie canon in some time.". Kevin Crust for the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'' commented that "despite its melancholy bearing, "Madre" is a hopeful meditation on grief and memory".

Awards and nominations

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mother (2019 Spanish film) 2019 films 2019 drama films Spanish drama films French drama films 2010s Spanish-language films 2010s Spanish films 2010s French films Caballo Films films Le Pacte films