MY MOTHER IS A COW

Short Talk with Patricia Gomes (producer)

BEST SHORT STUDENT FICTION FILM Category

22nd IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival 2025

Brazil, Fiction, Portuguese, 00:14:59, 2024

Synopsis: Left in her aunt’s care on a family ranch at the edge of the burning Brazilian wetland, 12-year-old Mia is desperate for the touch of her mother’s love – but in this volatile natural world, with the impending threat of a deadly Jaguar consuming the family, love comes in unexpected form.

Biography: Moara Passoni is a Brazilian writer & director. She wrote and directed the feature-length essay film Extase (CPH:DOX, MoMA’S Doc Fortnight, Visions du Réel) which received critical acclaim and won a gamut of international awards.  Moara was co-writer of the Academy Award-nominated The Edge of Democracy. She was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Filmmaking” by Filmmaker Magazine, is an alumna of TorinoScriptLab, La Fémis-Cannes Producing Atelier, GOTHAM Week and NYSCA.

Moara Passoni, director

Toma Manov: We see shots of an exotic animal in the film. How was that process, especially navigating it in case you had to bring it close on set to a child actor? 

Patricia Gomes: First of all, thank you very much for inviting us, by "us," I mean me and the whole crew. It was chaos! The main character isn’t just a person, we also had a cow. And a cow isn’t like a dog. You can’t just direct a cow the way you do a dog. So the actress spent three days with the cow, petting it, getting used to each other, so they could become familiar. And when it came to the wild animals, we filmed in Pantanal, a very wild area in Brazil, full of animals like crocodiles, jaguars, and cows, of course.

Toma Manov: And did you have any hiccups on set with wild animals that were not supposed to be there for the shooting?

Patricia Gomes: Yes, we did. That area is extremely rich in biodiversity. Unfortunately, it’s also a cattle farming region, and many parts of the forest are being destroyed. The farmers are burning land, so wild animals are being pushed out and are looking for food. And unfortunately, cows are the first thing they go after.

Toma Manov: Was there anything specific you were looking for when finding and planning the locations you were going to film in?

Patricia Gomes: Yes, that place is very personal for our director, Moara Passoni. The story is partly based on her own experiences growing up in that area. Pantanal is one of the most beautiful regions in Brazil. People visit it for educational purposes too. So it was the perfect location for this story. Also, this film was her thesis for her Master’s degree at Columbia University, and she felt that Pantanal was the perfect place to shoot her short film.

Toma Manov: Since this is a film on the topic of hostility and being estranged from one's mother, did you have to play any role in helping the child actor adapt to that? 

Patricia Gomes: So, the actress, she’s amazing. It’s Luísa Bastos. We had another actress, and as soon as she arrived, Moara, the director, said, “She’s the one.” And she really engaged in the history and in the place. And she loved to be there, she loved to play for us. It was something like, completely different, because she’s from São Paulo. São Paulo is like, let’s say, it’s a busy city. It’s one of the biggest cities in Brazil. And suddenly she went to a place like, completely wild. I think she was the perfect choice.

Toma Manov: Did you have to pick from a lot of actors, and how was the process of picking the actor?

Patricia Gomes: No, they are all people from the area. They are not actors. So the auntie, yes, the auntie, the uncle, and the other guys, they are from the area. They are people from, local people, and they engaged in the story. They said, “Let’s do it, this film. So let’s do it.” So they helped us a lot. We had just, like, two professional actors there. So we’re really happy because the community said, “Let’s do it.”

Toma Manov: Yeah, it really seems like a film done by a community.

Patricia Gomes: Yeah, it’s natural. Because they just portray themselves. It’s the daily basis—they portray themselves.

Interviewer: Toma Manov

Editor: Martin Kudlac