Madres
2022 · 20m · España
Directed by Daniel León Lacave
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
Addressing the subject of surrogacy, 'Madres' is about the lives of two women, Tatiana and Emma: one, a pregnant immigrant from Eastern Europe, and the other, a rich wife who cannot have children. When Tatiana decides to sell her unborn baby to Emma, a complex relationship will develop between them.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects surrogacy films to wring tears from class guilt and bodily autonomy hand-wringing, but Lacave seems genuinely uninterested in easy moral theater—he just watches two women negotiate tenderness across an impossible arrangement, which is almost frustratingly restrained for a premise this loaded.
The film's formal restraint—its refusal to sensationalize the surrogacy transaction in favor of patient, observed moments between Tatiana and Emma—positions it squarely in a lineage of European relationship cinema that trusts silence and proximity over exposition, with the kind of considered framing that makes the intimacy feel earned rather than imposed.
Lacave's decision to shoot most scenes in close, two-shot conversation creates an almost claustrophobic tenderness that makes the economic and emotional power dynamics feel lived rather than stated, and it's that single formal choice—staying tight, staying present—that transforms what could've been a thesis film into something genuinely intimate.