A Woman, My Mother

Filmmaker Claude Demers tells the story of his search for his biological mother and their eventual meeting. He does this in voice-over, accompanied by images from Canada's national archives. The painstakingly selected and fluidly edited black-and-white clips build up, like the perfectly fitting pieces of a puzzle; an impression of his mother as he had imagined her. How she grew up, worked, loved and left him. The images and the supporting music above all represent the inner worlds of both the maker and his mother: at times yearning and melancholy, at others stormy and restless or resigned and calm. A Woman, My Mother is a lyrical film at the boundary of documentary and poetry. To make his mother real, the filmmaker reinvents her story, separating truth from fiction. Through a poetic, deeply sensitive montage blending fiction and documentary, archival footage and re-enactments, the filmmaker imagines the life his mother might have had. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)