Semret
Caterina Mona, Switzerland, 2022o
Semret lives with her daughter Joe in a small apartment in Zurich. Since she fled Eritrea many years ago, the young mother has been trying to give her fourteen-year-old daughter a good life in Switzerland. To this end, she works in the hospital and hopes to be admitted to midwifery training. But suddenly the protected life they have built threatens to disintegrate.
With around 30,000 people, Eritrea is the country with the most recognized refugees in Switzerland. The first film by Caterina Mona from Ticino is based on intensive research in this diaspora, even if the story is mostly fictional. It tells of a difficult mother-daughter relationship, which suffers especially from the mother's seclusion: Her integration is as much the product of her strong will as of constant denial and repression. The traumas of the woman, who works in the maternity ward of a Zurich hospital, cause her to stay away even from the Eritrean community, as well as constantly restraining her teenage daughter's zest for life. The film is convincingly cast with Eritrean singer and actress Lulu Mebrahtu and provides an almost documentary-like insight into the life of this present, yet quite unknown community in Switzerland. Only the buttoned-up nature of the main character sometimes becomes a dramaturgical problem even for the film.
Till BrockmannGalleryo
