Noomi Rapace is teasing her portrayal of Mother Teresa in the upcoming film “ Mother ,” in which the multi-faceted Swedish talent tackles the role of the Catholic saint when she was just an ordinary woman.
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Speaking at the Sarajevo Film Festival this week, where she’s part of a competition jury headed by Paul Schrader, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “Prometheus” star said she was drawn to the offbeat portrait of Teresa because she wasn’t interested in doing a conventional biopic. “She was no saint,” Rapace said. “She’s a quite complex character.”
“Mother,” which marks the English-language debut of North Macedonian filmmaker Teona Strugar Mitevska (“God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya”), will follow seven days during a pivotal moment in the life of the revered saint, when she decides to leave the Loreto Entally convent in Calcutta and launch her own order.
“She’s waiting for permission from the Vatican to go out on her calling, her mission, to leave the convent and start her mission outside,” Rapace explained. “No one has done what she’s asking permission to do. It hasn’t been done before. She’s a woman in a man’s world.”
Rapace, who left her family in Sweden at the age of 15, said she could relate to the story of Teresa, who also left home as a teenager, as she understands the feeling of “leaving the safety behind.”
“I’ve felt like I’m against all odds many times and finding my voice and myself in different foreign situations,” she said. “So I think I can relate to her stubbornness and her conviction that she needed to do this, even if it was going to be painful.”
Rapace continued, “She talks a lot about darkness and her doubts. She once said, ‘If I will ever become a saint, it will surely be one of darkness,’ which is very powerful.”
Of the collaboration with Mitevska, Rapace described the director as “an incredible filmmaker” and praised her “punky passion,” saying: “She’s not too polite to the story.”
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“Both me and Teona somehow have some connecting tissue to Mother Teresa’s determined stubbornness, and how she takes on something and how she doesn’t back away and just pushes through,” she said. “I can relate to that, that you keep fighting for something you believe in, even if everyone is telling you it’s not going to happen. Or no one else can see it.”
Mitevska, who was in Sarajevo this week to pitch the dark comedy-horror series “ Little Yugoslavia ” alongside Slovenian co-creator Sonja Prosenc, left the Balkan fest for Calcutta, where the director said she’s finalizing locations for “Mother.” Production is set to begin on Sept. 23 in Belgium, where interiors will be filmed, before moving to India.
“This is not a biopic,” Mitevska told Variety , describing the film as a snapshot of one week in the life of the saint “before she becomes the Mother Teresa we know today.”
“We wanted to demystify the personage behind the myth and simply speak of this highly intelligent, ambitious woman with a great heart, who was just as flawed as we all are,” said the director.
Born in North Macedonia, which was also the birthplace of Teresa, the director said the film was inspired by a docuseries she shot for Macedonian television more than a decade ago, during which she recognized the significance of Teresa not as a religious icon but as an empowering female figure. “She had a rebel punk rock energy that spreads like a virus; she was a general of an army of women,” said Mitevska.
“Mother” is a five-country co-production between Macedonia’s Sisters and Brother Mitevski, Belgium’s Entre Chien et Loup, Denmark’s Frau Film, the Netherlands’ Baldar Film, Sweden’s Spark Film & TV and Film i Väst. Kinology is also on board as co-producer and is repping world sales.
The Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 16 – 23.
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