CM 2023

EDF International

The  Surrogate

CineMart 2023 - The Surrogate

Goals at CineMart Currently, the project is a Mexico/UK co-production. We are aiming to apply to EFICINE and to the UK Global Screen Fund in early 2023. Our goal at CineMart is to meet with potential co-production partners and sales agents from Europe. Furthermore, we would like to discuss our options with representatives from European funds.&nbsp;Synopsis Teresa is a single mother who has left her 6-year-old son, Emilio, with her mother back in Chiapas, in order to work as a housekeeper in a resort in Cancun. The resort works with a local surrogacy agency to provide the parents with accommodation while they visit Cancun to pick up their babies delivered through Mexican surrogates. When Teresa decides to become a surrogate herself in order to make ends meet, she gets matched with Bita and Ryan, an Iranian-Canadian couple living in Toronto who have been unable to conceive. While they wait for the couple&rsquo;s frozen embryos to arrive in Mexico, Teresa has to prepare her body by taking medications and hormone injections. The embryo transfer is done a few weeks later as Bita and Ryan watch through the monitors, while Teresa can barely follow what is going on in and around her body. When the pregnancy is confirmed two weeks later, Teresa finally meets Bita and Ryan over a Zoom interview where her answers are mistranslated to the benefit of the agency. Following her pregnancy, Teresa is moved to her new &ldquo;residence&rdquo;. The new place is nothing but a rundown shared apartment with other surrogates. But the mood at the house is upbeat as the women go through different phases of pregnancy and exchange stories about their intended parents. As she gets closer to delivery, Teresa finds increasingly difficult to deal with Bita&rsquo;s growing insecurities and her alarming separation anxiety. They go as far as asking her to play a lullaby in Bita&rsquo;s voice to her belly every night and convincing her to sign a contract for her breast milk for an additional fee. They also ask her to sleep with a small elephant toy so that it smells of her because Bita has read online that smelling the surrogate can calm the baby down after birth.&nbsp; As Teresa finds herself torn between her own desires and the demands of the agency and the foreign parents, she decides to rebel in her own way and finally take back control over her body.&nbsp;&nbsp;Director&rsquo;s Biography Born in Tehran (Iran) in 1981, Ali moved to Vancouver, Canada in his teens. In 2008, after spending a year attending Abbas Kiarostami's filmmaking workshop back in Tehran, he decided to follow his real passion for making films by studying at the London Film School. His graduation short film, Aman (2011), was awarded the Cine+ prize at the Premiers Plans Film Festival in Angers, France and the MEO Best Student Film prize at Lisbon &amp; Estoril Film Festival.&nbsp; His feature film debut, Falling Leaves (2013), premiered at Montreal World Film Festival in 2013 and won the Federico Fellini Award for best international newcomer at Tiburon International Film Festival in California USA.&nbsp;&nbsp; His latest feature film, funded by the Hubert Bals Fund, Tehran: City of Love (2018), premiered at the BFI London Film Festival and IFFR. It has screened at over 20 film festivals worldwide and won the Youth Jury Prize at Sofia International Film Festival, Best Actress Prize at Beijing International Film Festival, and Ecumenical Jury Prize at Miskolc International Film Festival in Hungary. The film was distributed theatrically in the UK by New Wave Films in October 2019.

Here & There Productions

Teresa is a single mother working as a maid in a resort in Cancun catering to foreign guests picking up their babies delivered through Mexican surrogates. The surrogacy agency promises white sand beaches and a cute little baby, but when Teresa decides to become a surrogate herself, she soon realises that not everything is as it’s pretended to be.