Being mother is the most natural thing in the world. Or so it seems. Yet the demands on women with children have rarely been as overloaded and contradictory as they are in today’s Western world. Promises of happiness are often followed by disadvantages, excessive demands and feelings of guilt. The mother has become an artificially glorified ideal, which nevertheless is often legitimized by the „nature of the woman“. We live in a time when three people could claim to be the same child’s mother: egg donors give their genes to beget children, surrogate mothers deliver babies which they give away immediately after birth, and men raise children by themselves – without a woman at their side. Hence the question arises: What makes a human being a real mother?

The planet’s busiest maternity hospital is located in one of its poorest and most populous countries: the Philippines. There, poor women face devastating consequences as their country struggles with reproductive health policy and the politics of conservative Catholic ideologies.

Under the shade of a Magnolia tree, a group of pregnant women gathers weekly. Among them is Teresa, an experienced midwife who listens to them attentively. Sitting in a circle, the women reflect on the impending birth of their children and their own emerging roles as mothers.

"On the Tip of the Heart" - is a documentary on the St Peter's Hospital in Brussels, structured around seven doors from the maternity to the morgue. This is an opportunity for the director to ask the audience a question, namely: what is there in common between a medieval city, human life and a hospital?

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As a letter to her son, the filmmaker testifies her experience as a photographer aboard the Aquarius, a ship that rescued 29,523 people in the Mediterranean between 2016 and 2018.

This student film by the award-winning Helena Třeštíková bears many of the hallmarks of her later work. Made as a graduation piece when she was at the FAMU Film and TV Academy in Prague, we see the director developing the distinctive observational style of filmmaking that she has used so effectively throughout her career. Over the course of several months, she follows a young pregnant woman as she becomes slowly acquainted with the joys and responsibilities of motherhood.

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Given the fetishizing and normalizing character that is given to motherhood in patriarchy in order to perpetuate the social order, do we truly choose to be mothers? Why is care, of fundamental vital labor, presupposed as an especially appropriate task for women?

Two drag queens living in a place where homophobia and transphobia are common open their hearts to the world, revealing the human being behind the makeup and wigs. They share the reality of drag as an art form and what it means to move forward as part of the LGBTTTI+ community in a Latin American context.

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Claire is a midwife and has devoted her life to others. At a moment when she is preoccupied by the imminent closure of the maternity clinic where she works, her life is further turned upside down when Béatrice, her father's former mistress, turns up on the scene. Béatrice is a capricious and selfish woman, Claire's exact opposite.

Alba, a young woman, lives with her boyfriend in a small apartment. One morning she receives terrible news along with the few month-old baby Mía, who is dropped off in her life. Upon her arrival, Alba experiences a series of insecurities and fears that will cause her into a mental breakdown. After her father is dead, Alba is forced to take care of the baby he left, even though the baby represents imbalance in her life.

Maria is a shellfisherwoman and midwife in a small village in the Illa de Arousa in 1970s Galicia. After an unexpected event, she is forced to flee to Portugal.

Emmett enters into a nightmarish game of therapy with his wife Anya, who has inexplicably taken on the persona of his estranged and recently-deceased mother.

She drove me into a corner, then forced me to go beyond my limits. She made me confront the absolute: love, sacrifice, tenderness, abandonment. She dislocated me, transformed me. Why didn't anyone warn me? Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this?" Un heureux événement, or an intimate view of motherhood, sincere and with no taboos.

Lola (40) enjoys a happy life until an unforeseen pregnancy throws her plans into disarray. Resistant to motherhood and confronted by societal expectations, Lola and her boyfriend, Bruno, deal with the situation. As Lola confronts her inner fears about the repercussions of not embracing motherhood, she embarks on a quest for answers. Unexpectedly, Bruno reveals his desire to become a father, adding further tension and complexity to Lola's search for clarity about her future amidst pressure to conform to societal norms.

Saeko and Yukako live together in a small apartment complex in Tokyo. After the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, both live in a state of unease. Saeko, who is in a divorce, is worried that her daughter is exposed to radiation. Yukako is also afraid of radiation and tries to convince her husband to move. The two become friends after Yukako tries to save Saeko after a suicide attempt.

Helena, a woman in her early 40's, is obsessed with getting pregnant. After failing her last try, her neighbors get back from the hospital with their new born baby. Helena breaks in to their house when they´re gone, steals the baby monitor and starts listening to what happens next door.