Mother-Child

With this film, I aim to contribute to reflecting on the urgent need for a safe, legal and free abortion law in Argentina. In my country, every three hours, a girl under the age of 15 is forced to give birth. At the beginning of 2019, there were public domain cases of girls between 11 and 13 years old, pregnant as a result of sexual abuse in the north of the country, who requested a Legal Pregnancy Interruption in a timely manner, which were delayed and hindered by hospitals, religious organizations and some sectors of the Judicial Branch. Therefore, the #NiñasNoMadres (girls, not mothers) national campaign gained a lot of strength, which we also support with this film.With a team of five people, we shot in public hospitals of the Buenos Aires suburbs for three months, learning about hundreds of stories of young women who have their doctor appointments there. We found stories of pain, but also of great courage in facing the systematic violence they are victims of.We decided to shoot in black and white with a single 50mm lens, wondering about the right distance: one that would allow us to look at the girls' faces and listen to their stories without interfering. If we had to approach, if that initial distance was opposed or they resisted our encounter with them, our bodies would make the movement, trusting the question raised by documentaries: where does the other person begin, the girl?