Marking her move into fiction filmmaking, Italian Director Maura Delpero’s Maternal (Hogar) is an enthralling exploration of the meaning of motherhood set within the confines of a religious Buenos Aires refuge for young unmarried mothers. In our chat Delpero shares why she believes personal stories make universal cinema, how the tools of her documentary background provided an elucidating view of the lives she wanted to dramatise on screen and her methods for building cohesion between the performance styles of the film’s professional, non-professional and child actors.

Lu and Fati are teen mums living in a religious shelter in Buenos Aires. Sister Paola arrives from Italy to take her final vows. Approaching the girls’ motherhood she’ll face a challenging situation.

It’s difficult for women to confess they have difficulties about motherhood, you always have to be the perfect mother.