Films

Julia, a respected 40-year-old conductor, seeks to start a family with her partner, Georg. After a long struggle to conceive, the charismatic Dr. Vilfort offers them a fertility treatment. However, during childbirth, the baby is taken for “treatment” without the mother’s consent. When Julia is reunited with the child, she feels strangely detached from the little one and begins to question whether the baby truly belongs to her. Austrian filmmaker Johanna Moder crafts a delicate and unsettling thriller, translating the torment of postpartum — or the unease of new motherhood — into a suggestion of an unnameable reality, perceived only by the mother. Contained — it implodes rather than explodes — yet occasionally tinged with dark humor, the film premiered this year in Berlin, where it competed for the Golden Bear.