Hoda Taheri & Boris Hadzija - The Mother Trilogy

Screened:
SAT 24/10, 15:00 FYRIS

Tickets

Bringing together these films, the Mother Trilogy explores motherhood, desire and belonging through the experiences of an Iranian refugee woman in Germany. Moving between personal experience and fiction, the films examine how intimate decisions are shaped by family expectations, migration laws and gender roles. Motherhood emerges as a space of possibility and contradiction, where the wish to belong meets the desire to live on one’s own terms.

Hoda Taheri and Boris Hadžija are Berlin-based filmmakers from Iran and Serbia/Montenegro, whose work explores migration, identity, queerness and alternative forms of family through genre-crossing storytelling. They met while studying directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) and have since developed a shared cinematic practice. Together, they created the short film trilogy Mother Prays All Day Long, As If Mother Cried That Night, and Mother Is a Natural Sinner, which all premiered at Locarno Film Festival. Their debut feature I Plant My Hand in the Garden (2026) recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

MADAR TAMAME ROOZ DOA MIKHANAD (MOTHER PRAYS ALL DAY LONG)

Confused by German bureaucracy and questions around sexuality, Hoda, an Iranian Asylum seeker in Berlin finds herself emotionally and sexually hooked on Magdalena who promised to grant her stay permission by marrying her. Mother Prays All Day Long questions the domination of heteronormativity which still shapes expectations of the modern western society around feminine bodies and motherhood.

Germany 2021 / 24:00 / Director: Hoda Taheri Producer: Boris Hadzija

ENGAR MADARAM GERISTE BUD AAN SHAB (AS IF MOTHER CRIED THAT NIGHT)

Sirvan and Hoda, an Iranian couple whose asylum application has been rejected in Germany, live in a refugee camp in Berlin. In order to obtain a residence permit, they decide that Hoda should become pregnant by a German man, in order to give both of them the right to stay in the country. As we pursue this unconventional path of getting permission to stay, we lose ourselves in the labyrinth of German bureaucracy and remain there with no solution but with the bitter feeling that current laws and structures are deeply questionable.

Germany 2023 / 19:00 / Director: Hoda Taheri

Hoda&Boris-As If Mother Cried That Night

MOTHER IS A NATURAL SINNER

Hoda is an Iranian refugee woman who lives in exile in Germany with her boyfriend, Hadi. Due to an unexpected pregnancy, Hoda begins to examine common beliefs of gender roles in relationships and challenge the patriarchal social norms concerning female bodies and motherhood.

Germany, Iran 2024 / 15:00 / Director: Hoda Taheri, Boris Hadzija

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