Alys Tomlinson and Cécile Embleton’s highly cinematic documentary feature Mother Vera, which concerns a charismatic former heroin addict who has lived in an Orthodox monastery in Belarus for 20 years, was handed the Grierson Doc Award at the close of the 68th BFI London Film Festival (LFF).
The Short Film Award went to Rehab Nazzal for her documentary Vibrations from Gaza, about the resilience of deaf Palestinian children as they live with Israel’s military attacks.
Mother Vera co-directors Tomlinson and Embleton spoke to BDE before the film’s world premiere at Visions du Réel in April 2024, and explained how the pair complement each other well.
“What really worked with Alys and I was the combination of our views and backgrounds. For me, spirituality is a really big part of my life. Meeting Vera resonated very deeply in a spiritual sense. Alys is an atheist and her anthropological practice brought another really crucial dimension,” Embleton suggests.
Tomlinson acknowledged that she had never before set foot in a convent and so “this was a new world to be entering.”
Both directors shared the same sense of “stillness, framing and composition,” and cited the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky as one of their great influences. Mother Vera is mostly shot in black and white, as was Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, his 1966 classic about a medieval icon painter.
They were working as “essentially a two-woman team,” doing everything together. Only later, when they secured some extra funding, were they able to bring on a sound recordist. Cécile did the majority of the cinematography while Alys handled sound.
The filmmakers were very aware of outsiders’ perception of Belarus under its dictatorial ruler Lukashenko, but wanted to show a less brutal side of the country. The monastery was anyway far removed from the political turbulence elsewhere in the country. “Obviously, we are in underground crypts for hours on end,” Tomlinson noted. “You do feel you are stepping into a separate world when you are in that community.”
Mother Vera was the manager at the convent stables. Part of her daily life involved looking after and riding horses. The film includes astonishing footage of her galloping at high speed across a snowy landscape and of her playing with the beasts. One horse lies down beside her and lets her lay her head on its flank. She clearly feels an inner freedom when she is with the horses. They in turn trust her. The filmmakers call her “a horse whisperer.”
“What struck me was this breadth of her character. She was somebody who was so earthy and physical and at the same time so connected to nature and striving to be connected to something bigger than us. I felt very drawn to her quest,” Embleton reflected to BDE. “She wants to experience all of life and yet she was in this monastery.”
