Catalan filmmaker Mar Coll delivers a daring psychological thriller on one of society’s great taboos: the notion that not all women are suited to motherhood. Adapted from Katixa Agirre’s novel Mothers Don’t, the film follows Maria, writer and new mother, as she navigates the duality of creative ambition and maternal expectation.
Maria’s world unravels when she becomes obsessed with a startling case of infanticide. This story forces her to grapple with agonising doubts about her own capabilities as a mother. As she endures painful breastfeeding, sleepless nights, and a strained partnership, she starts teetering between reality and imagination.
Drawing on Susan Suleiman’s resonant quote »Mothers do not write, mothers are written«, the film frames Maria’s struggle as emblematic of a larger conundrum: the fraught tension between motherhood and self-creation. Coll echoes Suleiman’s alternate vision of a »mother-writer« where creativity and motherhood enrich rather than exclude one another.
With a mesmerizing score by Zeltia Montes and Laura Weissmahr’s deeply nuanced performance, Salve Maria probes isolation, guilt and societal stigma torturing women who do not fit the ideal of motherhood. Through the lens of the thriller genre, the film challenges us to empathize with a woman deemed monstrous by her own mind – and by a society incapable of seeing her differently.

Guest: Mar Coll

In cooperation with Gleichstellungsbüro der Stadt Dortmund.

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