Mother Just a Smile 2023

Directed by Cyrielle Raingou

The elderly Isabel Cardoso works in the kitchen of a nursery school. Her hands are worn, her memory sharp and heavy with grief. In moments of stillness she reaches across the divide, communicating with her deceased mother through the stirring winds, the rippling surface of water, the cracked earth. A richly intimate documentary mosaic of the strength, struggle and transcendence of black womanhood.