Materna

Four women in the New York City subway. Four mysterious faces and four wandering glances. In the car, an unstable man is behaving more and more aggressively. It seems to be only a matter of time before there will be an explosion of violence. Before that happens, however, we go back over and over again to learn about the stories of the passengers. Materna is not, however, a film about destiny that intertwines the fates of strangers. It’s a film about the fact that every person is a separate microcosm composed of a constellation of problems. And also about the fact that people are very different, though with something in common as well. We return to the theme of family ties, that original kind of belonging that is often an entanglement. Each successive segment, although connected to the others in terms of plot and themes, could function as an independent whole—each part has the features of a good story, being simultaneously condensed and open, unfinished but complete.