Àma Gloria

Date: 29/10/2024 Times: 7:30 pm - 8:55 pm

A winner of the award for Best International Film at the Jerusalem Festival, this is one of those films, of which we have shown a few at Moving Image, with an astonishing performance by a little girl, in this case the six year old Louise Mauroy-Panzani. Again, she had never performed before but is able to express every emotion that is asked of her by the director, Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq, who has only directed two films previously. Six year old Cléo loves her nanny Gloria more than anything. When Gloria must suddenly return to Cape Verde to care for her own children, Cléo makes her promise that they will see each other very soon. Gloria invites Cléo to her island and the two must make the most of their last summer together.

The motherless Cléo, with her thick glasses and soft cheeks, is plainly vulnerable. Yet a strength of the script is that all the main characters are shown to have missed out on mothering. Equally refreshing is the fact that Gloria doesn’t conform to ‘good’ servant stereotypes. French-Georgian director Marie Amachoukeli uses simple, child-friendly animation to help us understand the bond between Cléo and Gloria; these segments essentially function as breezy, dreamy flashbacks. There is also a lot of use of close-ups so that we feel at one with the relationship between Cléo and her nanny. The wider context for the film is post-colonial France and the effects of Empire on the people living in the ex-colonies; points are made without a hint of didacticism. Àma Gloria is a small-scale film, barely over 80 minutes, but it leaves an almighty impression.

Venue: William Loveless Hall