It is 1948, we’re in the broiling heart of Kolkata and Sister Teresa has tired of her teaching role at the Loreto Entally convent. Teresa applies to the Vatican for permission to set up her own mission, but the response takes an age, her patience wears thin, and she has a more immediate problem. When her heir apparent, Sister Agnieszka, admits that she is pregnant, Teresa is duly scandalised. She loves Sister Agnieszka but is repulsed by her, too. “I would never jeopardise my mission for earthly pleasures,” she declares. Facing a dilemma that tests her faith and flares her ambitions, she makes a life-altering decision.
"Mother Teresa was a mother indeed, but to millions. She was strict, harsh, disciplinarian, yet motherly beyond our comprehension. /.../ We chose to tell her story before she became the Mother Teresa we know today. Our Mother is thirty-seven years old, and the film follows seven days in her life. I present this Mother almost as a CEO of multi-national company, relentless and ambitious. I judge her sainthood by her deeds and not by her saintly manners. Let’s celebrate women as they are, not just selfless martyrs or eternal victims, but as fully developed characters, as persons that can have other ambitions than becoming someone’s wife." (Teona Strugar Mitevska)
Teona Strugar Mitevska
Born in Skopje, Macedonia, in 1974. Her first brush with film was as a child actor. She has a degree in graphic design and studied film at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York. Whilst based in Brussels, Teona is an established Macedonian director who addresses topics related to her homeland. She runs the Sisters and Brother Mitevski production company with her siblings Vuk and Labina.