Only Mothers Know What Life Is About

Love and money.

One has two children, a traumatic birth behind her, and a clear sense that it doesn't matter what she studied or what she'll do next - the children are what matters, and ambition is beside the point. Another lives in the wilderness in a straw hut, washes dishes in a bathtub, gives birth to her children at home, and instead of returning to the system wants to grow vegetables for her family. Organic, naturally. A third got pregnant at the start of her first year of university - at twenty-one. A fourth sent her son's father packing a year and a half after giving birth. A fifth gave birth at forty-two, loves her son, but loves her work too and is very good at it - playgrounds and mothers' talk terrify her. A sixth had no life for a long time, only work; now she has a life but no work. For now she's writing a play about mothers. And then there's a seventh, a left-wing feminist who went to her first protest a few days after giving birth, but now, as she says herself, she's quite liberal.

Seven women, all mothers. A theatrical documentary drawn from nearly three years of time-lapse interviews - a stage comic on the border between grotesque and tragedy. Embarrassingly authentic, even though we know authenticity is somewhat of a whore.

The production asks how Czech society perceives motherhood and questions of family finances. About recognition and dependence, about what it means to be a mother in public space, about mothers on a pedestal and on the bench of capitalism. And of course about the nursing mafia. (And about sex.) And what's the deal with work during maternity leave anyway?