Plot Summary

A deeply personal study of motherhood as a ‘rite of passage’. It interweaves moments from the filmmaker’s childhood, family life and psychotherapy with world events, including the Holocaust, the Vietnam War and the Chernobyl nuclear accident, to evoke the complex inner world of maternal experience. Grethel’s tale from the fairy story Hansel and Grethel juxtaposes the personal story with a mythical exploration of freedom and individual responsibility.