Unable to resolve her identity crisis, an ambivalent mother makes a startling choice on a family beach trip.
Director’s Vision for ‘Sand Mama’
I tried hard to have a baby, every high- and low-tech intervention possible. So it came as a surprise when, though I loved my son with a fierce desperation, I found motherhood perplexing and occasionally awful. It was bizarre: on the one hand, I felt more confident in who I was than ever before. On the other, I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. In my screenwriting seminars, I felt oddly invisible: talked over or ignored. When people looked at me, they didn’t see an artist with something to say, they saw a mom — and even more relegated to the background, one over 40. By night, I breastfed my baby, frantically wrote scripts, and sparred with my partner over childcare. By day, my parenthood ambivalence fueled “Sand Mama.”
I set out to make a film that would play with how motherhood and middle age render women invisible — sand mermaids indistinguishable from the beach, existence washed away by the tide — and our own role in accepting or rejecting this fate. Like me, main character Vera has lost her sense of identity, obscured by her newfound roles of mother and wife. I wanted Vera’s struggle to cut to the bone while staying true to my own voice, marked by a sense of absurdity and humor. When Vera chooses to transform into the eroding sand creature, literally and figuratively buried by her child and partner, “Sand Mama” asks the viewer to ponder how motherhood defines women’s identities, and at what cost.
I am often advised not to confess that I have a child to the industry, assured that my commitment will be questioned, interest in hard work presumed to be nil, abilities automatically viewed as lesser. By making “Sand Mama,” I refuse to bury any part of who I am in the sand. I am a mother. I am a filmmaker. I am visible.
