At the Venice Film Festival, Orizzonti has made the bold decision to open with an anti-biopic, selecting the new effort by Belgian-Macedonian filmmaker Teona Strugar Mitevska, Mother, dedicated to the nun of Macedonian heritage Mother Teresa, who was canonised in 2003. Right off the bat, you can forget about all of the attributes usually associated with this saintly figure. Teresa is first and foremost a woman – one who is valiant, strong-willed, narrow-minded, loving, stern, lively and always thinking about her own ambition even more than her faith. It’s no surprise to see the filmmaker, whom we could happily classify as being among the most fervent of iconoclasts, shake up the idealised image of this “star of Christianity” in order to turn her into a punk icon – one who is not modern, but rather timeless in her power and determination.

We catch up with Teresa one day in 1948, in Calcutta, India, as she is beside herself hoping for news from the Vatican: she is waiting to be given permission to leave the Sisters of Loreto in order to found her own order, which would go on to become the Missionaries of Charity. This pivotal week sees Teresa irremediably become herself and lay the foundations for her devotion, composed of love for her neighbour, destitution and an unshakeable faith in equality among humans. However, in order to do so, she will have to overcome one final test: her faithful sister Agnieszka, in whom she used to see a successor who could take over the reins of the congregation, is pregnant. Even though she would like to rid herself of this burden, Teresa is fully opposed to any abortion, even at the risk of curbing her own ambitions – and disavowing her wish to help her fellow human.

We’ve already mentioned that Mother is not a biopic. While Teresa’s reaction to abortion is the result of the era she lived in, the time period is not the main focus of the film: indeed, the era is basically not addressed at all, with the director even going so far as to blur the temporal reference points. She pays most attention to examining Teresa, her strength of character, and her personal struggle to find the means to overcome both inner and outer adversity. In this sense, this portrait is akin to a literary stream of consciousness: we are watching through a kind of on-board camera that brings us as close as possible to her doubts and hesitations, and we can even gauge her conviction and the things she renounces. On screen, we are simultaneously looking right at her and her face, as well as looking in front of her in some painstakingly composed shots – with the other sisters, in and around the convent, or watching her almost neurotically rearrange the furniture in her room, which she makes a point of not becoming attached to, eschewing any idea of property. Played with an almost mystical fervour by Noomi Rapace, Teresa becomes an extremely complex figure, driven by a fierce passion and a mission that’s more earthly than divine, and grappling with her flaws. She is a heroine who is admittedly self-sacrificing (she renounces motherhood, among other things), but for her, sacrifice is not an inevitability, but rather a fully deliberate choice.

Mother was produced by Entre Chien et Loup (Belgium), Sisters and Brother Mitevski (North Macedonia), Rainy Days Productions (Sweden), Frau Film (Denmark), SCCA/pro.ba (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Raging Films (India). Its international sales are handled by Kinology.