Country: New Zealand
Year: 2023
Duration: 16
Two women, a mother and her young adult daughter, inhabit a timeless world on a small rural farm where they share in daily work and rituals. Between farm chores, brushing each other’s hair at night and sharing a bed, the potency of their glances suggests an undercurrent of change that will deliver the daughter onto her own. The presence of a stranger at the dinner table marks a shift in the closeness of the mother and daughter. The daughter grapples with feeling herself outside, sitting unnoticed between the lovers’ gaze. She finds herself shut out from the bedroom that she is used to sharing with her mother. The mother dreams the touch of the stranger. The touch is transferred onto the daughter. Awakening to a surge of sexual curiosity, the daughter re-enters the world according to herself.
Biography
film director
Sarah Grohnert
(Germany) is a New Zealand based writer and director. She originally trained as a film editor in Germany before studying directing in the UK. Her award-winning debut feature documentary Ever the Land (2015), selected in NZIFF, VIFF, Venice Architecture Biennale, BAFICI, Big Sky Documentary Film Fest, and Cork Int Film Fest, caught the attention of Academy Award winner Jane Campion, who has mentored her over the last few years and tapped her to direct the 25th anniversary documentary for The Piano.
FILMOGRAFIA
Anna, Frau (cm, 2006), Ever the Land (doc, 2015), Piano 25 Years (doc, 2018), Milk of Dreams (cm, 2024).
Declaration
film director
“I am very interested in films that succeed in getting close to the indescribable things that make up the human experience. In my work, I enjoy going places where words can’t go. Cinema for me is a place where I am invited to feel deeply, to discover places in myself that I have never visited before. In the making of my films, I try to pay attention to those places and those feelings and I let them inform the direction that my films essentially want to take.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY, EDITING: Sarah Grohnert. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sebastian Cort. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Donna Hanson. COSTUMES: Kiri Donaldson. MUSIC: Tui Mamaki. SOUND: Sofiane Tib. CAST: Donogh Rees, Comfrey Sanders, Andrew Alcorn. PRODUCTION: Estelle Clark.
CONTACT: Sarah Grohnert mail@sarahgrohnert.com
