Malqueridas
Tana Gilbert, 2023, 73 min

Introduced by Agnès Houghton-Boyle

“an anthem of human, maternal, cinematographic resistance” – Antonio Maiorino

Entirely made with archival material and testimonies of women while serving time in prison, Malqueridas builds their stories through images captured by them with cell phones inside the prison, recovering the collective memory of a forgotten community. They are women. They are mothers. They are prisoners serving long sentences in a correctional facility in Chile. Their children grow up far from them but remain in their hearts. In prison, they find affection in other partners who share their situation. Mutual support among these women becomes a form of resistance and empowerment.

“Because its subject is vertiginous, because its formal approach is masterful, a radical gesture that makes the off-screen come to life and shows us only the details, the blurred image, the stolen pixels. Narrative and set-up are at the service of the witnesses. The director puts us side by side with the incarcerated women, without passing any judgment on their value, and this is a prowess of cinema’s poetic license” – Jury statement, Settimana Internazionale della Critica ’23