After 14 years collectively, editor Nela Märki and cinematographer-producer Martin Rattini find a kernel of disappointment in a shared life they describe as blissful: they haven’t been in a position to have kids. Grief and love inform the couple’s first characteristic—they share administrators’ credit—with the title “Why the F*** Am I So Unhappy?,” which paperwork their altering relationship to childlessness.

Their documentary mission was pitched earlier this week at Thessaloniki’s Pitching Discussion board and has since acquired the Mediterranean Movie Institute Doc Award, which consists of free participation within the 2024 version of the MFI Doc Lab, a script growth program devoted to documentaries. Movies that Märki has edited have screened at Locarno, CPH:DOX and IDFA, however “Why the F*** Am I So Unhappy?” might be a debut characteristic for each of them as administrators. Rattini, who can be a cinematographer, produces with Italy’s Helios Sustainable Movies.

Talking with Selection, Märki says she’d seen nuanced depictions of childless {couples} have been missing in cinema, whereas the existent ones have been largely negatively tinted, significantly the ladies. Then, she understood one of the best ways ahead was to make a movie about her and Martin’s story, and to do it collectively. “We thought, ‘We’re filmmakers, let’s doc this!’,” says Rattini relating to the way in which the couple handled an ongoing cycle of IVF therapies, procedures invasive to the feminine physique typically billed as “a simple repair and a fast factor.” After a decade of making an attempt to construct a nuclear household, the 2 launched into a journey to make “a movie about what comes after you notice nothing works,” Märki says, suggesting that perhaps there’s something else to cherish in that scenario, “residing a cheerful life with out kids.”

Märki was open about her ambivalence on the subject of motherhood, being each “open” and “pressured” by societal expectations.” Within the titular query, they take into account the pitfalls of id as outlined in opposition to a inflexible concept of the “regular” nuclear household: “If we weren’t ready to do that ‘regular’ factor, are we not a part of the ‘regular’ individuals?,” she asks. Within the means of researching childlessness, she seen how sturdy the recurring narrative is, and the way one-sided: for those who don’t have youngsters, you lack one thing basic.

After the age of 40, as Westerners, they seen that exclusion and isolation occur virtually naturally once you’re the one childless couple in a pal group. This facet of the social guidelines made them take into account “Why the F*** Am I So Unhappy?” additionally a mission the place they will query belonging. “Virtually 1 / 4 of the inhabitants of Western Europe and Japan by no means have kids, so what about them? No one talks about them, at the least not in a really constructive gentle,” Märki says.

Creating this documentary mission has allowed the couple to show the digital camera on themselves and one another for the primary time in such an intense means. “Why the F*** Am I So Unhappy?” mixes an archive of vacation recollections, filmed on Tremendous 8 with an underwater digital camera, with digital, 4K or smartphone footage of their day by day life now, because it unfolds. “These are our so-called ‘blissful moments’,” Rattini says, poking enjoyable on the concept of an ideal—and completely documented—couple, “as a result of once you movie one another on analogue movie for 10 years, on each trip, you find yourself with a illustration of the right couple.”

Moreover, Märki and Rattini will digitalize and incorporate archive supplies from their very own households to enrich the construction. An necessary half they’ve additionally mapped out is a component the place they replicate on the goals and aspirations they’ve had, and “additionally issues we can not inform one another, like our fears,” Märki says. The 2 have barely totally different attitudes towards childlessness relying on their particular person backgrounds, so to inform their totally different tales, she says, they plan to contain therapists as facilitator figures. Contrasting with the imagery of a “excellent couple” is uncooked honesty of their shared seek for methods to “free your self from internalized social narratives and stereotypes,” she says.

The Thessaloniki Documentary Pageant runs March 7 – 17.