Mother Teresa, born as Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje, is the symbol for charity. In 1950 she founded her order in Kalkutta, at the end consisting of a total of 517 missions, with which she carefully looked after her arms, the homeless and the dying patient. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her mission, and in 2016 she was canonized by the Catholic Church. But already in her lifetime her flawless, long since the mythological exaggerated image was first crack:
On the one hand, the hygienic standards and the lack of medical care were criticized in the homes they operate, while on the other hand it is said to have accepted high donation amounts from sometimes dubious sources. The questionable sentence also comes from it: “It has something nice to see how the poor accept their fate and suffer like the passion of Christ. The world gains a lot from its suffering.”
Mother Teresa no longer has to be a saint
In the end, mother Teresa was less about repaying suffering and poverty – but on the contrary to a radical devotion to earthly suffering as an ultimate expression of spiritual purity? Some speaks for it, even if their achievements cannot be denied. Accordingly, the North Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska is targeting an ambivalent picture of the famous benefactor with her seventh feature film “Mother”.
The film begins with an extreme close-up on the face of Teresa (Noomi Rapace, the Lisbeth Salander from Millennium trilogy to Stieg Larsson), accompanied by the distorted sounds of an electric guitar. The title lies over the picture in large -format versals. After the start of the statement, however, it continues comparatively conventionally: We accompany the protagonist seven (crucial) days through her everyday life as a member of the Loreto nitries, a Catholic order that is committed to the educational and mission work in India. Until 1948, Teresa worked as a teacher, among other things, until she decided to leave the monastery and to devote herself to the poorest of the poor with her order “Missionaries of Charity”.
No saint, but a woman full of doubts and contradictions: Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu alias mother Teresa (Noomi Rapace).
Director Strugar Mitevska explores less why mother Teresa ultimately decided to take this step – even if she has various (and partly reluctant) indicators. Rather, it seems to be concerned that, in the collective memory, only as an impossible distinguishing figure with cinematic means for a long time – which is not to be confused with demonization, but can also be understood as a liberation. Mother Teresa no longer has to be the embodiment of everything good and noble in the world, but may appear human. Sometimes that also means: unsympathetic, doubtful, error, selfish. When the camera keeps moving rapace's eyes very close, we see it not unconditional kindness, but also a controlled strict.
In her attitude, too, her contradiction is reflected: sometimes she pleads to tear down the walls of the convention and literally open up to the world, then she also demands a existence prescribed by the suffering and willingness to sacrifice. If she questions the male dominance within the system of the Catholic Church, it sounds surprisingly modern. At the same time, Teresa is driven by the idea of sin and a radical opponent. And ultimately she doesn't know exactly: does she actually act from altruism – or is it not primarily vanity and addiction to validity that drives it?
When nuns dance to hard rock
However, these considerations in “Mother” do not lead particularly far, while he is narratively largely in the well -known drivers of a monastery drama inspired by true events. One could almost think that the film with cool brown, white and blue tones is also visually in asceticism, there would be no Strugar Mitevska's ambitions to make a “punk rock film” enriched with anachronisms in addition to a biopic, which is meticulously researched.
Several times, individual stylization and deliberately inappropriate music missions disturb the border cloudy simplicity. This happens most prominently in a sequence in which Teresa first hallucated a boy blowing her flour in the face, then Lordis ESC winning song “Hard Rock Hallelujah” dancing nuns. In the rhythm of the film, however, these always do not work a little too calculated – they remain piece of pieces, which is particularly reminiscent of how little “mother” also dares aesthetically from cover.
Conclusion: Mother Teresa was canonized by the Catholic Church in 2016 – almost a decade later, director Teona Strugar Mitevska tries a cinematic deconstruction. This harbors numerous interesting approaches, but is primarily suffering from an undecided implementation.
We saw “Mother” at the Venice Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated its world premiere as the opening film of the Orizzonti series.