Catalan Meri Collazos Solà’s passionate, thoughtful and deeply heartfelt documentary Breathe, Mom (Respira, Mama) tackles medical and societal attitudes toward poor urban air quality, and more specifically how it impacted her when she discovered her newborn daughter’s genetic vulnerability to respiratory illness.
As she comments right at the start of the film: “This is my story. My silent battle for a better future for my daughter…for the right she has to breathe clean air in the city where she was born. Air pollution affects children…and makes their life in cities worse and worse.”
The film opens in artistic fashion with an audio of breathing and images of a pregnant woman, as well as industry, cars, smoke and animals, before switching to Barcelona in 2013 when the director gives birth to her daughter Nina.
There is charming footage of mother and baby smiling and happy, seemingly facing a brave new world full of possibilities. But, she adds, “my daughter Nina was born with a genetic condition that makes her lungs more vulnerable to the effects of air pollution – Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a hereditary condition that I have never even heard of before.”
The film sees Solà discuss the issue of urban air quality with a series of mothers – and scientists – determined to advocate for cleaner air quality. She has a video call with London’s Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who talks about the Ella Roberta Family Foundation she set up to determine why her daughter Ella had died from an asthma attack and what made her have so many attacks herself. She underlines: “I learned air pollution is a silent killer.”
Raised by the sea in the Costa Brava as a child – before moving to the US and later to Barcelona – director Solà describes how she happily walked the Barcelona streets as a pregnant woman. “I loved architecture and [was] happy to know my daughter would grow up in such a city – little did I know pollution could have affected her before she was born.”
She also meets with obstetrician Dr Lola Gomez Roig, who ran a study to get a more accurate picture of the environmental exposure of pregnant women to possible air pollution. She also travels to Portugal to meet someone who went through a similar situation to herself. Shane Fitch’s son Arran also suffered from Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, but she brought him up by the sea where he adopted a healthy lifestyle and became a keen surfer.
Solà travels to the US to talk to Dominique Browning, founder of Moms Clean Air Force. She set the group up in 2011 “to talk about how we could mobilise other mothers to understand climate, the danger of climate, understand air pollution issues and understand how much power we actually have if we use it.”
The film dwells on the positive impact COVID had on clean air quality – Solà comments how contradictory it was that she was so happy to know her daughter was safe in the city and that she could hear birds singing – and travels with Shane to Madrid to meet Dr Maria Neira, Director of Public Health and Environment at the World Health Organisation to discuss the lessons learned from COVID about air pollution.
Naturally enough, Breathe, Mom is deeply evangelical about the importance of dealing with air pollution but, astutely, emotion is balanced with hard evidence and it is difficult not to disagree with the level of dangers pollution can bring to communities in general and those with breathing issues in particular. The film ends – rather charmingly – with footage of Arran teaching Nina to surf, and leaves the final comment to the child: “It’s the cars that should get out of Barcelona. I shouldn’t have to live in a polluted city,” before adding – as a postscript of sorts…”Breathe, Mom.”
Spain, 2024, 78mins
Dir: Meri Collazos Solà
Production: Alba Sotorra S.L., TV3
Producer: Alba Sotorra
Scr: Joan Lopez Lloret, Meri Collazos Solà
Cinematography: Joan Lopez Lloret
Editor: Meri Collazos Solà
Music: Chris Child
