24/09/2025 - The Swiss-Argentinian director shares the secrets behind her third feature, which beautifully engages with themes of depression, motherhood and the ungraspable

(© Jorge Fuembuena/SSIFF)

Swiss-Argentinian director Milagros Mumenthaler brings her third film, The Currents [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Milagros Mumenthaler
film profile], to San Sebastián’s main competition, after it world-premiered in Toronto’s Platform strand. It tells the story of a mother and fashion designer, Lina (Isabel Aimé González Sola), whose life shifts after a seemingly impulsive, unconscious decision to jump into freezing water while on a work trip. Cineuropa spoke to her about the creative choices that stimulate the work’s mystical yet grounded tone, the theme of generational trauma and crafting sound from a character’s perspective.

Cineuropa: Your film’s inciting incident stimulates something unique: Lina’s fear of water, which ultimately unravels the rest of her buried trauma. Does water mean something to you in particular? Where did this idea originate?
Milagros Mumenthaler: The project came to life when I was in Geneva, which is where I grew up and where I go every year because my family lives there. I imagined myself walking around there, and I imagined a woman throwing herself into the icy water. It was a very powerful image, and this evoked many questions: who is this woman? Why is she doing this? It's an unconscious act. Once you imagine something like that, water becomes part of the story. Water has always seemed to me to be a very comforting element, because you grow in the womb in water. Water is always a place where you can calm down – there is something super relaxing about it. However, it also has that contradiction of being quite dangerous yet playful. It's a place where you let yourself go. It's also the place where many people decide to go to commit suicide. In the film, what I also tried to think about was what water means to Lina. I liked that contradiction of water as this comforting place that she somehow couldn't leave. It reminds her of something from a past life with a mother, but it's also her place of belonging.

How did you decide which parts of her past to reveal throughout the film, through the various interactions with Lina’s friend Amalia and Lina’s mother?
When you write a script from the character's perspective and think about the character, it's as if decisions are often made in a very organic way. I also liked the idea of Lina being someone who reinvented herself at a certain point, who needed to leave the past behind in order to be Lina and not Catalina. It's also a moment when she's really in trouble in her everyday life, in the life she's built for herself. Deep down, she doesn't have anyone with whom she can share what is happening to her. That's why the most logical thing for Lina to do at that moment was to go back to her past and visit her friend to ask for help. She knows that somehow her friend won't judge her, because she knows something about her history. Then, there's something about how all roads lead to her mother. When she sees the embroidery, then when she imagines the theatre, that sewing machine noise, and we end up with that lady who is there during the lighthouse scene, it's like all roads lead to her having to go to her mum to try to resolve something.

The theme of motherhood and one’s devotion to a daughter courses through the film, but we also engage with the reverse: a woman’s complex connection to her mother.
The film certainly concerns itself a lot with mothers and daughters, generationally. For me, Lina abides by the mandates that society demands of women or men who come from a “good family” like hers. It's as if there was something about her that made her have to be a mother. I don't think Lina made a conscious decision like many women do when they decide to become mothers. It's more like a commitment. I found it interesting that when she lets herself get carried away by her psychiatric illness, it's a form of abandonment. It's Lina's decision to change something, as there's something mirror-like that she feels as a fear. However, she manages to say, “Well, I'm not going to be the same – I rescue myself, and my daughter rescued me, and I decide to stay here, too.”

Could you talk about the vibrant soundscape and the musical motifs you use?
Generally, I work a lot on the sound in the script. There are many elements of sound written directly in the screenplay. You can hear her footsteps echoing in the city, for instance, but it all has to do with Lina. It's like it’s subtly saying, “Where does she look?” But it's also what she hears when she's in places. A lot of it is sound that has to do with the character. From the writing of the script onwards, we always had Holst's music. It's as if we were searching for it. We knew it had to be music that is melancholic on one hand, but also a little playful, with something magical or enchanted about it, but also with moments of tension. I felt that it represented the whole film first and foremost. His music has something about getting carried away by that state, and I think there's a certain enjoyment in letting yourself go. For me, the music also had to be like the music that Lina listens to, the music she imagines. At one point, we listened to Holst, and I said, “This is it; it's perfect.”