Bonne mère

The widowed Nora (Halima Benhamed) is the soul and backbone of a large family. At daybreak, she crosses half the city to arrive at the airport where she works as a cleaning lady. Afterwards, she works as a carer and housekeeper for an old woman. At home, her children and grandchildren keep her on the go: one son has idle tendencies and her daughter is trying her luck at escorting, while  her oldest son is in prison, who she visits frequently and does everything she can to support. Due to his lawyer’s expensive services, she sells her jewelry and does without the new set of dentures she’s been saving for some time. Nora is exhausted – but she doesn’t give up. With a gaze brimming with love, Hafsia Herzi’s second film crafts the portrait of a contemporary lady of sorrows. Shot with non-professional actors in the same banlieue in the north of Marseille where she herself grew up and inspired by her own mother, she tells a deliberately undramatic story of familiar togetherness and social questions with a lively handheld camera, avoiding ever falling into miserabilism along the way. (bik)