MOTHER NATURE
Barbara Anastácio
Portugal/USA
When an app promises Mia her genetically ideal sperm donor, her journey to meet her top matches spirals into absurd encounters and a reckoning with herself.
SYNOPSIS
Mia, a 38-year-old data scientist who has meticulously optimized every aspect of her life, faces her fertility window’s closing countdown. Her solution? ‘Mother Nature’, an app promising genetically superior sperm donors. Her calculated plan quickly derails into a surreal road trip as she meets her three top matches. About to self-inseminate in her motel room, the passionate sounds of a couple next door trigger her own unexpected desires. As her plans literally spill away, Mia confronts the messier truth: what void is she really trying to fill?
INTENTION
“How can an experience so profoundly strange and transformative also symbolize the ultimate conformity?” Maggie Nelson asks about motherhood. With Mother Nature, I confront this paradox. My film reimagines the woman-adrift prototype of Loden’s Wanda, transported to our 21st-century algorithmized landscape. The narrative unfolds like a road movie through Mia’s encounters with sperm donors genetically matched by an app. Meeting in liminal spaces — gas stations, empty parking lots — that maintain emotional distance. Through these absurd interactions, the film blends dark comedy with poignant social commentary, exposing how motherhood has become politicized — the rise of the tradwife, JD Vance’s “childless cat ladies” and Musk’s warning of “population collapse.” It emerges from my own reckoning with motherhood ambivalence and existential turmoil. What drives me is the absence of narratives that portray this ambiguity. Most stories glorify motherhood as fulfillment or frame childlessness as tragedy. Mother Nature creates instead a layered dark comedy where freedom might be found not in resisting or giving in to conformity, but in embracing the paradox of the choice itself.
DIRECTOR
Barbara Anastácio
Barbara Anastácio is a filmmaker known for her captivating and intimate style. With a background in Anthropology and Photography, she skillfully navigates documentary, commercials, fiction, and music videos, living between Lisbon and NYC. She created the acclaimed NOWNESS series My Place, and her films have been shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center.
PRODUCER
Catarina de Sousa
Catarina de Sousa is a producer, director, and journalist, founder of the production company Foi Bonita a Festa and Casa do Xisto – a residency for cinema and visual arts. She is known for her work in auteur cinema, with films that have received international awards.
Genre
Dark comedy
Length
15 min
Language
English
Shooting location
New York and Upstate area, USA and North of Portugal (all to be confirmed)
Production company
Foi Bonita A Festa (Portugal), Cousins (USA)
Estimated budget
€ 200.000
Secured funding
pProducer's own investment - € 20.000
Looking for
Private investors, Sales, and Distribution