Maternal

Young mothers live in a shelter run by nuns in Buenos Aires. Lu and Fati are both teenagers and both have small children. Paola, an Italian sister preparing to take her final vows, arrives at the same house. One day Lu disappears and her child is left behind. Paola starts looking after the little girl. Maura Delpero's film is the first fiction feature by a director who worked for years in documentary, and it was shot in a real shelter. The telling judges nobody: neither the young mothers nor the nuns. Two kinds of motherhood stand side by side and both are incomplete. Lidia Liberman plays the sister. The tone is quiet and held back.