Final Rating: 3/5
How do you move on with your life when you get a cancer diagnosis at 37 years old? In Mama, the Ecuadorian director Ana Cristina Benítez tries to discover how to. The film is her documentation of her treatment for a late diagnosis of stage 3 breast cancer. Ana is scared of the possibility of death coming too close to her. She describes feeling it in her throat.
At the same time, the world is slowing down to combat an unknown illness, COVID-19. Five years after she got the news, the documentary is a diary of her fight with the disease. In this sense, Ana takes off her protective shield and exposes her vulnerability. It becomes a profoundly personal exposé of her psyche in the process.
Documentary filmmaking allows experimentation to represent facts in a raw and realistic manner. Ana describes the documentation of life as her tool to discover what she cannot answer. The context comes from footage of her in 1996 when her father gifted her a camera. He was in the United States; therefore, the VHS tapes would allow him to feel close to his three children.
The director describes the exploration of capturing her daily life as freeing. It would grant her the conscience of her life. It is a crucial element to understand the reasoning behind portraying yourself in a naked form. Ana is not ashamed of showing her breasts, even when she needs to undergo a mastectomy, the surgery to remove the breast to contain the cancer. The reflection in the film format allows her to heal, which, for her, takes more than radiotherapy and chemotherapy to achieve remission.
The vulnerable aspect invites the audience to understand her at that time. Yet, it lacks a deeper context of almost twenty years of her life. She narrates and shows her last recording, when she visited her father in New Jersey, United States, in 2002. It feels like a missing link between understanding Ana before the diagnosis. Filmmaking is a timely fragment of reality, especially in the documentary medium. However, it misses a more profound connection with her to deepen the emotional affinity.
It is a rough watch to experience someone going through the pain of harsh doses of medication. Ana even smuggled a camera into venues where she could not do it. But it has a vital value for her. The camera eases her mind for five hours of treatment, and she needs to stay still to receive the medications. It is a brutal physical experience, and filming relieves its heaviness.
Also, the film finds its best moments in the balance of spiritual healing through prayers and the usage of herbs, as well as in the therapeutic possibilities of the lenses. Both segments deliver some of the most beautiful and poetic scenes. One of those scenes is the connection with parents and asking for blessings. Her mother throws rose petals on her body and prays for physical healing. Nonetheless, she looks forward to strengthening her mind throughout this long journey. Also, floating in the ocean is a poetic effect, and it becomes a pause she takes in narrating this heavy trajectory. The most compelling moments involve Ana and her approach to the spiritual and acknowledging the beauties around her. It visually transmits the emotional weight she is carrying.
Thus, Ana Cristina Benítez documents her lowlights to understand where life takes her. The result is Mama, a heavy depiction of breast cancer and how it saps energy, health, and life. The lack of prior context to comprehend the holistic picture of her life makes a more profound connection harder. Still, it is a poetic diary of how film eases life’s pains.
Mama was seen during the 2025 Hot Docs film festival. Thank you to Cinema Tropical for the screener.
