Amparo Aguilar

The year 2023 marks the 35th anniversary of the association La Mujer y el Cine, and 43 female directors have come together to deliver a fragment of their gaze, a frame, an aesthetic and ethical decision, a tribute to women who anticipated the struggle. A leap into the void made by women filmmakers of different ages and backgrounds. United, in a sort of electronic loom, as an offering and a legacy in which a moment in the history of Argentine cinema is told, where we were all one, with our eyes on the past, our gaze on the present and the horizon full of the future.

After finding the soundtrack of Tararira, the only Argentine surrealist film shot in 1936, lost since then, and starring their great-grand uncles, the Aguilar brothers set out to unravel the family history at the crossroads of the great political events of the 20th century. It is also a story of El Cuarteto Aguilar, a very particular music band, which had an openly lesbian member in the first half of the last century. The discovery of the soundtrack of the lost film leads to a documentary collage that travels through Argentina, Spain and other parts of the world to ask again, one hundred years later, if perhaps the revolution is not also an aesthetic.

Everybody has a mother. But still, motherhood remains a state filled with silences. Between society’s mandate to be a ‘good mother’ —always patient, caring and happy— and the private reality of mothers around the world, a huge void in understanding remains. Aiming to break this silence through candid interviews with mothers of all backgrounds and generations in Latin America, Malamadre narrates the untold story of motherhood, from the mothers’ point of view.