Synopsis
My mother’s words tells the everyday life of a woman who loses her words. By her side, her three children, each in their own way, watch over her, set the tempo and organize her daily life. Moving her out of the house she has lived in for 40 years would break her down. She carries inside her layers of a story, of a territory. Her house, the barn, the little river, and the trees are the last landmarks of a space that shrinks a little more with every passing day.
A word from Tënk
An unembellished family radio diary, My Mother’s Words is an exquisite offering.
Director Aurélia Balboni's sensitive microphone witnesses the decline of her mother's faculties, who, suffering from an incurable degenerative disease, is unaware of her loss of means.
The roles are reversed; it is now the children who must take care of their mother, while her words are quietly deconstructed before our very ears.
Paradoxically, although this is a terrifying tale - since it brings us into direct contact with our own mortality and that of our loved ones - this deeply moving account is tinged with a quiet light. In spite of everything, life goes on, holds on, and can even find the means to bring out the most beautiful things that hid within us.
My Mother’s Words is a complex and moving work that, by force of circumstance, makes us question our legitimacy as intruding ears capturing those family moments that usually remain confined to the private sphere.
In the face of what is offered to us, we can only open our ears, and our hearts, with gentleness and reverence.
Louis-Olivier Desmarais
Sound designer, composer and musician
