Roma Hope D’Arrietta Debuts 'Moeder'

Emerging Australian director Roma Hope D’Arrietta’s short film Moeder has recently been selected to showcase at the World of Women Film Festival held in Sydney from March 5th to 8th 2013.

 

Woven fragments of her family story, and the enigmatic, beautifully flawed women in her lineage, Moeder (meaning ‘mother’ in Dutch) is a moving portrait of life in a traumatised post-war Europe through to contemporary Australia.

 

 

Currently residing in New York City and working with producer Emma Thompson-McLeod, the emerging team’s short film has featured in a swathe of festivals in the US and the UK. The film has recently screened in DOC NYC in the US, EDIN DOCS (part of the Edinburgh Festival UK) and Aesthetica in York, UK.

 

 

Showing at the same time as WOW, the film will also appear in two other women’s film festivals in March – POW (Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival) and WAM (Women, Action & The Media Film Festival in Boston US).

 

At the heart of Moeder is the director’s mother Sacha De Vries. When De Vries was 14 her mother committed suicide. The film chronicles her unconventional attempts to escape her childhood as she travels the world as a top model and stylist. Beneath her seemingly glamorous life lays an extraordinary pain and a profound loss that still echoes through her life to this day.

 

“The film bears witness to an incredible life and pays homage to the survival of the spirit and the cracks of light illuminating an often times dark existence,” said D’Arrietta. “Moeder is an ode to life and loss, mothers and daughters, endlessly complex tragedy and eventually, hope.”

 

Contemporary footage and interviews are paired with the original Super 8 scenes rendering Moeder as an elegant and heartrending portrayal of a life richly lived, but shadowed by a past that continually defines the future.

 

It is also a confirmation of a rising directorial talent with a rapidly increasing body of rich, nuanced and beautiful work.

 

Moeder debuts as the first film of the festival’s opening night. www.wift.org/wow

For more information, please visit: www.moederthefilm.com