Diagonale review: Mothers (2025)
Diagonale
Documentary Competition
What does motherhood mean, and has anything changed for the better in the 21st century regarding parental leave, societal expectations, flexible working hours, child care, state support for single mothers, and laws that guarantee alimony for sole child carers after divorce? Are we any closer to long-term solutions that will make parenthood easier for mothers who still carry the burden of multitasking? Eleven women speak about their experiences in Birgit Bergmann & Oliver Werani’s straightforward documentary Mothers, done most classically – in the form of individually executed interviews in their private homes.
The kitchen is a very symbolic setting for the interviews. Women, according to the keepers of patriarchy, belong in the kitchen, after all. It is a place like no other to make them understand how timeless the lie about “bread givers” is, ready or not. Lilian, a woman who came to Austria from Colombia and married a local man, admits that she could never connect to that particular part of her apartment because she hates cooking, to the horror of her mother and the scorn of her mother-in-law. For Patricia, an African-Austrian mother of two, the kitchen is the only intimate space where she can be alone.
Many women in the audience will relate to the movie, but they might also want to see and hear something different from what they already know. Being a mother is a full-time, non-holiday, or weekend leave job, and it often comes with huge loneliness. Yes, we know.
Birgit Bergmann and Oliver Werani do not bring anything new to the table. On the other hand, what they do bring is a diversity of women who speak about their lives. Represented are single moms and those still married, hetero- and lesbian alike, very young or in their fifties, bodily fit and with disabilities, those who always wanted to be mothers and such who openly admit how difficult it was for them to embrace motherhood.
At one point, the eldest among them, Eva, expresses her concern about young mothers and the complete confusion regarding what one should and should not do nowadays to harm the child’s development: “There are all the things you could do wrong. It starts with all the mistakes you can make by carrying a baby or the things you are not allowed to do because they affect the child’s spine. You even have to consider what materials baby matrasses are made of.” Eva speaks about the phenomena which impact us all: the modern war of opinions in which all fights happen against the backdrop of the “lazyland” internet, which feeds us all kinds of information while simultaneously trying to profit from our interest in certain topics.
In the closing credits of this film on a quest for questions surrounding motherhood, the helmers thank their mothers, Esther Bergmann and Ulrike Werani. Mothers had to be crowdfunded because of the lack of funding. After its world premiere in the documentary competition of the Diagonale 25, it will be released in cinema in May, with the Viennese premiere in the Gartenbaukino. This warm but uninventive account of what it means to be a mother is unlikely to venture very far into the international film circuit.
Original Title: Mütter
Country: Austria
Language: German
Year: 2025
Runtime: 84′
Production: FeinStaub Film
Directed by: Birgit Bergmann & Oliver Werani
Writer| Producer| Editor| Sound: Birgit Bergmann
DoP| Concept: Oliver Werani
Dramaturgical counseling: Dieter Pichler
Music: Moses Roth
Sound Design| Sound Mix: Maximilian Walch
Colour Determination: Jimmi Kurt Hennrich
Music Recording: Sergey Martynyuk
