Synopsis
My mother has led a very unorthodox life, which has taken her both to palaces and under bridges. She lived in her small car for over 10 years until she could no longer walk and the car gave up right after that. [Rebecca Blöcher]The mother of animation director Rebecca Blöcher didn’t want to live an ordinary life. She wanted 'something more,' she explains in this stop-motion film. The people around her didn’t understand—in a letter written in 1968, a girlfriend criticizes her for going out on her own and making men jealous, while advising her to dress in a more “feminine” way and to join a cooking course. Blöcher’s mother brushed aside the advice. Years later still, she divorced her husband and stepped into the big wide world.
In Mama Micra the mother is a figure made of felt who recalls, in her own voice, her powerful urge to find freedom: “I was a real vagabond,” she explains. She traveled to Syria and Beirut, and envied the nomads in the desert. During the last 10 years of her life she lived in a Nissan Micra, washing in the morning in hotel bathrooms and sneaking into breakfast rooms to eat.
Her freedom came at a cost. She lost contact with her daughter, who counterpoints her mother’s account with her own recollections. But no harm is irreparable in this affectionate film. [IDFA]