LET'S CEE Film Festival

Giving birth to a child is the strongest thing a woman can ever do in her live. It is painful, it is disturbing and it sets out emotions you never thought could exist.

After giving birth the instinct of motherly love often does not come directly, it needs a minute, an hour, a day, a week or maybe longer… a mother needs time to heal her frazzled and empty body and come back to the world she was living in – this is what we call childbed.

Mara is giving birth to IVAN alone in a hospital. When she comes back to her home she gets beaten up by some mafia guys because she is in love with the wrong man in the wrong society where you can trust nobody and everybody is alone. She starts an incredible journey with her baby and finds her self-confidence in her strong, deep and heavy love for IVAN in the end.

Thank you, Janez Burger, for that deep and emotional road trip. Thank you for that taboo breaking opening scene and your courage to follow a woman who just gave birth and searches for herself and for the love of her baby in a patriarchal society of corruption.

Thank you Maruša Majer! Your performance is outstanding! We could’t believe what we saw, it was courageous, deep, painful and beautiful. We can’t wait to see you soon again!

Thanks to cinematographer Marko Brdar. The look of the film you created with production designer Vasja Kokelj, costume designer Ana Savić-Gecan and make up artist Alenka Nahtigal was fantastic. We loved the reduction of colours, the simplicity, how you just stayed close to the actress and made the drama so radical.

We also thank editor Miloš Kalusek for so much suspense and composer Damir Avdić for you great music!

Giving birth to child is hard and not an easy thing to do but it sets free so much power in every woman everywhere. This price is also dedicated to every mommy in the world!

When the world is full of political and ethnic conflicts, the films provides a vivid lesson of the wounds which are hard to heal from even after the conflict or the war is long over. Even though the story is based on the aftermath of the particular civil war, atrocities and ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia, the film could be read as a warning to what happens if people forget basic human values. At the same time, it gives hope that former mortal enemies can reconcile and psychological wounds can be healed.