Anke Engelke has proven by 2021 at the latest that she can be quite strong in the acting of a mother: In the short film “My Son”, which unfortunately also received little attention because of Corona, she plays the worried mother of a so wild and touching skateboard pros.
Now the actress, singer and comedian, born in 1965 in Montreal, Canada, is allowed to embody eight women.
Unconventional test arrangement
The film, designed as a kind of experiment (note the tasteful poster that goes with it), is located somewhere in the not exactly defined border area between documentary and feature film. It is about the roles that women and mothers play in our society, about the complex issue of motherhood.
The film, directed by Carolin Schmitz, tells not only about the doubts, but also about the beautiful moments associated with being a mother. Not only of power, but also of powerlessness, of anger and rage, of affection and love.
Eight women between the ages of 30 and 75 report on their lives in this film. The special trick of this highly idiosyncratic experimental arrangement: Even if we always see Anke Engelke in the film image and it is her mouth that moves, we still hear the original voices of the eight women mentioned. “The actress,” according to the film’s announcement on the distribution site, “integrates the women’s accounts into the laconic narrative of the everyday life of a woman and mother.”
