My Mother (Annem (film, 2015))

My Mother (Mia Madre) is a 2015 Italian-French drama directed by Nanni Moretti. The film follows Margherita, a successful film director pouring all her energy into a new project about factory workers, which she considers the most important work of her career. A perfectionist on set, she must simultaneously cope with turmoil in her private life: her mother is gravely ill in hospital and her teenage daughter keeps reacting in unpredictable ways. Into this tense situation arrives Barry Huggins, an eccentric American actor hired for the film, whose difficult behavior threatens to derail the production entirely. Carrying semi-autobiographical elements drawn from Moretti's own life, the story observes three generations of women and the bonds between mothers and daughters while portraying a woman struggling to balance her devotion to cinema with her family. Starring Margherita Buy, John Turturro, Giulia Lazzarini and Moretti himself, the film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where it received the Ecumenical Jury Prize, and was screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.