VIENTRE DE LUNA
MOON BELLY
Mexico / 2024 / 30 min / Colour
Italian premiere
As a female voice narrates, the images seem to suggest being inside a mother’s womb, with glimpses of moonlight and flickering candle flames breaking through the darkness. It is the voice of a girl from the Maya Tzotzil ethnic group, indigenous to the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. She is preparing to give birth for the first time, overcoming her fears, doubts, and torments by recalling the memories of women who have already gone through that moment. The women, filmed doing their daily work, with faces and hands marked by a life of hard labor, share how they experienced motherhood, while the mountains of Chiapas provide a majestic backdrop and the landscape brightens, though still swept by wind and rain. Then the sun rises, life is born, and the tenderness of a lullaby and the embrace of a mother with her child appear.
