ANATOLIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Mis Dos Madres
by Claudio D’Attis
REVIEW
" There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children."
Nelson Mandela
Mis Dos Madres, a fictional documentary film written and directed by Claudio D'Attis, focuses on the childhood period when human beings are the most vulnerable. It takes us to the first impressions of the feelings and thoughts that will forever shadow their lives. Fiction Documentary films, as a genre, while capturing and showing reality as it is, are also based on reinforcing the expression from an artistic point of view by adding representations of unreal fictional situations to the film.
The film "Mis Dos Madres" begins with footage shot in the orphanage of the Hospicio Cabana poorhouse complex, which was founded and still managed by the Catholic Church, whose historical roots go back to 1791 and is now considered a world cultural heritage by UNESCO, in Guadalajara, Mexico, and interviews with the children staying there. Children actually live a clean and orderly life there. It is seen that they are able to live a life above a certain standard, thanks to the officials who take care of their maintenance and inspection. Although they are surrounded by friends, have ready meals under a safe roof, and have a warm bed to sleep in, it is possible to see the traces of sadness and resentment in their eyes when they feel lonely. In Hospicio Cabana, the doctrines of the Church are taught to children from an early age. It is possible to see the effects of this in the interview with the children. The Church is trying to indirectly make the children feel that they are under the protection of God and the Pope, and that Hospicio Cabana is almost a secondary "mother" who replaces the mother's embrace and warm family home they lost. But it is clear that hearts are wounded. In the interviews, the children talk about their daily lives there. Mexico's poor have a not-so-bad life compared to their other children living on the streets with their families. Claudio D'Attis makes this clear with the photographs and images of poor street children interspersed with them. Meanwhile, he also puts together images from another church-controlled orphanage in Wuppertal, Germany. It functions as a short section where the two countries' economic opportunities and cultural differences are almost reflected. Images of immigrant children who are bullied at a school in Carosino, Italy, show another dimension of the event.
In this documentary by Claudio D'Attis, which is based on reality and about the realm of reality, he also puts together pieces based on fictional characters whose purpose is to artistically support the secondary mother figure in the concept of the documentary. With their black-and-white and sometimes faded images, they show that they are fictional stories in the documentary. In this fictional story, we see the couple being both mothers and a baby baptized. There's probably a baby they adopted. We also see one of the mothers hugging a man in a coffin. When we bring all these pieces together, we see the death of gender roles and the emphasis on new family models. Along with the references to holy motherhood through the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus in Christianity, a dimension is added to the film, which also references equal rights for sexual orientations. The fictional documentary Mis Dos Madres, which is sometimes supported by real, sometimes fictional, fragmentary images, touches on subjects that are too deep to be explained in all aspects in a short time, albeit superficially, and actually gives a great message by drawing our attention to the poor and orphaned children, whose protection we should pay the most attention to.
AIFF