Half of the feature films in competition at the 2024 Turin Film Festival dealt with the theme of pregnancy, whether wanted or unwanted, and in every case resulted in some sort of birth. Festival director Giulio Base maintains that his programmers simply chose the best films, and only after discovered their common subject, as if contemporary cinema had considered birth as the only way to observe the world with some semblance of hope. Our three favourite films were about birth: the Belgian Holy Rosita, the Tunisian L’aguille, and Vena, the German film we awarded the FIPRESCI Prize. Holy Rosita is grounded by the very good performance of its main actor, who generates empathy and a desire for redemption; L’aguille is grounded by a very strong script that posits many questions about the theme of identities and the consequent need to respect them; Vena, meanwhile, features a balanced combination of acting, writing, and other components, showing us how saving others is not only ethical behaviour, but also the only way the save ourselves.
Vena is a young drug addict serving a prison sentence: that’s why her son lives at her mother’s home, and why Vena can see him only a few times a week. In this context, she discovers that she is pregnant again, while her husband has reached the nadir of his addiction. One day, after a gynecological examination that she is convinced to undertake by her midwife and best friend, she realizes that her fetus isn’t developing as it should because of the substances Vena continues to consume. Vena decides to quit drugs and asks her husband to do the same: at first it looks like he might succeed, but Vena discovers he is lying, so she leaves him just when the judge tells her she will not be able to join a special prison in which mothers serving time can remain close to their children. The birth scene, in which the authorities take the child from its mother’s arms is a mixture of sadness, anger, and love that convinces us about the need for trust and mercy.
Vena is a very classical film that seems inspired by Clint Eastwood’s cinema, which always approaches similar stories in different ways. Its director, Chiara Fleischhacker, doesn’t use sophisticated techniques; rather, she uses conventional ones in the best possible way. The actors are totally within the respective characters, above all Emma Drogunova, who makes Vena’s changes plausible by acting in a very truthful way. The photography, whose colours become more and more natural, gradually soften the sharp, violent angles that characterize the early scenes. And finally, the editing is perfect, providing the right timing to every moment, while the music doesn’t emotionally overlap with the images and sounds, as so many contemporary films do. Even the choice to resist the temptation to forecast Vena’s future leaves us with a taste of a cinema that knows how to take risks, forcing the audience to be active, and imagine its own very personal ending.
In conclusion, Vena is a very courageous feature debut that doesn’t indulge in a self-satisfied drama with no way out, seeking instead to arrive at a a realistic and necessary place of hope in the midst of human mistakes that often trample on the rights of innocents: the children.
Marco Lombardi
© FIPRESCI
Edited by José Teodoro