As movie titles go, “Earth Mama” has a nice ring to it, though “Birth Mother” probably would have been a better fit for former Olympian turned filmmaker Savanah Leaf’s feature debut. Building on questions asked in her award-winning 2020 short “The Heart Still Hums” — an artful inquiry into the social challenges that made possible her sister’s adoption — the helmer turns an empathetic spotlight on the kind of woman society judges most harshly: a single Black mother on the brink of poverty who gives in to her addictions while pregnant.
The system is clear in such cases. Drug use counts as child abuse when a fetus is involved, and automatic protections kick in to separate a newborn that tests positive for methamphetamines from its mother. That’s what happened to Leaf’s sister, Corinna. Ergo, you might expect the director to approach the phenomenon from the adopted kid’s point of view.
The system is clear in such cases. Drug use counts as child abuse when a fetus is involved, and automatic protections kick in to separate a newborn that tests positive for methamphetamines from its mother. That’s what happened to Leaf’s sister, Corinna. Ergo, you might expect the director to approach the phenomenon from the adopted kid’s point of view.
- 1/20/2023
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
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