Maria Montessori

1900, Rome. Lili is a well known Parisian courtesan; everything she earns depends on how she looks. She has a daughter, and the girl does not speak; in the language of the time she is called an idiot. Lili comes to Italy to hide the child and thinks of leaving her at an institute. Maria Montessori works there; a doctor for children, she is developing a method with children until then held to be unteachable. Maria has a hidden child too; born outside marriage and told to nobody. The two women learn each other's secret. Lea Todorov wrote and directed; it is her first feature. Jasmine Trinca plays Maria and Leila Bekhti plays Lili. It is a French and Italian co-production. The film had its world premiere at the 2023 Zurich Film Festival and opened in France on 13 March 2024. The matter it treats is the price; both women hide a child in order to keep working. The film does not draw Montessori as a saint; the cost of her own choices stands inside the narrative. The scenes with the children at the institute look closely at the method and do not turn the teaching into a display. The narrative uses the medical language of the period as it was, and that is deliberately uncomfortable. Lili is invented; the narrative chooses to tell a historical figure through a fictional woman. The film also shows Montessori's struggle in the scientific world. The ending leaves both women changed. Its limit is structure; the narrative tries to carry two stories equally and the biography side stays shallow. Who it is for: viewers who like period drama and biographies of women. Who it is not for: it is slow, runs on two lines, and the ending measured.