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Ines Paris and Daniela Fejerman

Women in love

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- The debut film by the Spanish screenwriters, Ines Paris and Daniela Fejerman, My Mother Likes Women, is about a modern family, which puts tradition to one side, to love with more freedom

The two screenwriters, Inès Paris and Daniela Fejerman are a well established artistic duo, having written screenplays for cinema and television together for the last ten years. And now they’ve made the move behind the camera for their directorial debut, My Mother Likes Women. Both Ines and Daniela have theatrical training, as actresses and authors, and they have tackled this complex theme, looking at the freedom to choose who and how to love, with a light comic tone. “We wanted to talk about how today’s idea of the family has changed and show the many different ways the family can be organised, in contrast to the traditional approach” stressed the two fledgling directors during a press conference in Rome for the Italian release of the film, on January 16, 2004. “We were interested in taking an in-depth look at the relationship between parents and children, talking about a mother who doesn’t do the usual things mothers do, and who frees herself from all constraints, to announce her difference and reveal her choice of love with total emancipation”.

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Following their mother’s unexpected revelation, announced on her birthday, her three daughters, Elvira, Jimena and Sol are completely shocked. Sofia has been divorced for some time and now she’s fallen in love, but this time her new partner is a woman. Out of the three daughters, Elvira is certainly the one who’s the most confused: her mother’s confession sparks off a new and severe crisis of sexual identity in this neurotic and insecure girl.

“It’s a female story, which is very modern. The four main characters are women living an everyday life that doesn’t always satisfy them, and they have a desire for love that is ever more alive and changeable” added Ines Paris “They are female role models who break down the barriers in some way: either personal ones, in the case of Elvira, who manages to free herself from her twisted way of thinking that has made her extremely insecure, to the more traditional barriers broken by Sofia, who chooses to love a woman, after living with her husband as a married woman for a long time”.

This dual directed film has enjoyed success, both at the domestic box office as well as on the international circuit (the film was also released in France last season). Daniela Frejeman underlined how easy the film had been, even with two of them in the director’s seat “there were no problems at all. Even though we have two totally different personalities, we always have tremendous empathy, we never had to divide up the tasks, we both worked on everything together”. My Mother Likes Women won the Public Prize at the Annency Festival and the festival of Latin Cinema in Miami. The film was produced by the Spanish company, Fernando Colomo P.C.

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