Left in her aunt’s care on a family ranch at the edge of the burning Brazilian wetland, 12-year-old Mia is desperate for the touch of her mother’s love – but in this volatile natural world, with the impending threat of a deadly Jaguar consuming the family, love comes in unexpected form.
Director's Statement My Mother is a Cow takes place in the Brazilian wetland region, the Pantanal, which is being ravaged by fire. One of the wettest places in the world is now ravaged by uncontrolled flames. Raised in the concrete jungle of São Paulo, my protagonist, Mia, is sent to the Pantanal's wetlands when her mother’s life is in danger. Finding herself on a ranch, Mia discovers a world both carnal and mythical. Cows, jaguars, and crocodiles replace dolls in this distant land, where Mia learns to navigate life and death. As the fire draws closer, it drives the animals to desperately escape the danger. Meanwhile Mia forms a bond with a cow destined for slaughter. In order to save it she will push past her own physical and psychological limits. I grew up with my father, watching American and Spaghetti Westerns. My Mother is a Cow is my "Latinx Western" centered on the epiphany of self-discovery. The "wild" wetlands bring forth Mia’s "great unknown." She explores their secrets and discovers in tandem with the wisdom of her own body. The land to be conquered is not the "outlaw west”, but rather the dark shores of death and the first conscious glimpses of desire. The story behind this short film originates from my own childhood experience: As a young girl, my mother’s life was threatened, and I was sent to live with our extended family on a farm in the wetlands much like Mia. There, the terrible fear that my mother would die gave way to a visceral experience of life. My mother has always been my muse -- all my films are about her. In casting the role of Mia, I worked with my long-term collaborator and casting director, Patrícia Faria. 10-years-old Luísa Bastos showed up amidst dozens of girls for a test. I was instantaneously captured by the internal work I could see happening behind her strong eyes. And I was astonished by her capacity for imagination, and ability to put herself in the shoes of our lead character. My description of Mia made immediate sense to Luisa. "Mia is a young girl who falls in love with a cow to the point she thinks the cow is her mom". There is no doubt Luisa was the right actress for the film, I thought. For the following days, she traveled with us to the Reserva Caiman to prepare and shoot the film. There she embodied Mia fully, almost 24 hours a day, playing with how Mia would move, behave, see and react to the world around her. And as much as she could embrace Mia, Luísa could instantly also go back to being just a 10-year-old girl, discovering, along with our team, the magical dimension and intense nature of the Brazilian wetlands and our film set. DoP Carolina Costa and I worked together to translate the palates and energies of Henry Rousseau, Andrew Wyeth, and Francis Bacon' paintings to the film. We collaborated extensively to build our own visual language, borrowing our framing and inspiration from Lucrecia Martel, Andrea Arnold, Robert Bresson and Ingmar Bergman. Claire Denis and Steve McQueen inspire me to film the body as the main landscape. Apichatpong and Mallick inspire me to film the landscape as a character. At the same time, as someone coming from documentary filmmaking and Italian neorealism, I like to dive deep into reality, real places and real people. It is not by chance that to create our characters, my co-writer Fernanda Frotte and I looked for the collaboration of real people from the Brazilian wetlands. In My Mother is a Cow I wanted to tell a coming-of-age story of a young girl in this very special place, rooted in our modern time. I also wanted to draw attention to my home, the Brazilian wetlands, where illegally set fires, used increasingly by farmers to clear fields for cattle or crops, are roaring out of control, exacerbating the ever-increasing climate change disaster.
