SYNOPSIS

40-year-old Julia, a successful conductor, and her partner Georg are longing for a child when Dr. Vilfort offers them hope. Julia becomes pregnant after successful treatment at the fertility doctor’s clinic.
The birth does not go as planned and the baby is immediately taken away, leaving Julia in the dark about what has happened. When finally reunited with the child, Julia feels strangely distant. She begins to doubt whether it is really her child.

DIRECTOR’S
BIOGRAPHY

Johanna Moder is an Austrian screenwriter and director. Her feature debut HIGH PERFORMACE won the prestigious Audience Award at the 2014 Max Ophüls Festival.

Johanna’s feature ONCE WERE REBELS had its intl. premiere at Zurich Film Festival, winning the Ecumenical Jury Prize, as well as Best Director at the 2020 Max Ophüls Festival and the 2020 Thomas Plush Screenwriting Award.

Moder recently directed her first TV series SCHOOL OF CHAMPIONS, an ORF, BR and SFR co-production; the Passau crime film ZEIT ZU BETEN with Marie Leuenberger; and the TV movie EWIG DEIN. MOTHER’S BABY is an international co-production between Austria, Germany and Switzerland, starring Marie Leuenberger, Hans Löw and Claes Bang.


2025 MOTHER'S BABY
2024 EWIG DEIN (TV)
2024 SCHOOL OF CHAMPIONS (TV SERIES)
2022 ZEIT ZU BETEN (TV)
2019 ONCE WERE REBELS
2014 HIGH PERFORMANCE

COMMENTS
OF THE DIRECTOR

MOTHER’S BABY is a very personal film for me. It's a kind of reckoning, although I'm not sure with whom or what. The promised happiness does not materialise with the birth of the child. Rather: it is the beginning of a bad dream. Nothing is as it was. And what was, inexorably melts away and can no longer be held on to.                                                                        

This film tells of a hidden world that you can only enter if you become part of it. The reality behind the perfect façade of happy families is rarely shown or recognised. It is a predominantly female world, populated by paediatric nurses, midwives and desperate mothers who advise each other and share truths. It's about the challenge of dealing with the expectations of motherhood and finding yourself. It is a story about the hidden side of motherhood.                                                                        

It's about Julia, a conductor who has successfully worked her way into the front row, who lives in a happy, seemingly equal relationship with her husband Georg, who becomes a mother late in life and is suddenly thrown into all the prefabricated pigeonholes in which she doesn't feel at home. She buries a dream. She adapts. She goes along with what is expected of her. The bitterness lies like a sugar coating over the sweet new life that was supposedly promised to her.                                                                        

I deliberately chose to tell MOTHER'S BABY as a psychological thriller rather than a drama. The film plays with visual darkness and juxtapositions of beauty and pain. Julia's world becomes blurred, but the question of reality remains.

MAIN
CAST

Marie Leuenberger
as Julia

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The German-Swiss actress Marie Leuenberger has worked at renowned theatres such as the Residenztheater in Munich, Theater Basel and Staatstheater Stuttgart. For her cinema debut in DIE STANDESBEAMTIN by Micha Lewinsky, she was awarded Best Actress at both the Festival des FIlms du Monde in Montréal and the Festival Cinéma Tous Écrans in Geneva in 2009 and won the Swiss Film Award ‘Quartz 2010’ for Best Actress. In 2017, she again won the Swiss Film Award for Best Actress in DIE GÖTTLICHE ORDNUNG by Petra Volpe. For this role, she also won the award for Best Actress in an International Feature Film at the Tribeca Film Festival 2017. IN 2020, she was honoured with the award for Best Actress at the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn for her outstanding performance in BIS WIR TOT SIND ODER FREI, which was shown in the festival's main competition.

Hans Löw
as Georg

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Hans Löw is a German actor. During his studies at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich, he already had an engagement at the renowned Munich Kammerspiele theatre. From 2001 to 2009, Hans Löw was a permanent member of the ensemble at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg. In 2004, he was awarded the Boy Gobert Prize for young actors by the Körber Foundation. He has repeatedly worked for film and television with directors such as Maria Schrader in ICH BIN DEIN MENSCH, Ulrich Köhler in IN MY ROOM, Eva Trobisch ALLES IST GUT, Maren Ade in TONI ERDMANN and Detlev Buch in RUBBELDIEKATZ, to name but a few.

Claes Bang
as Dr. Vilfort

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Claes Bang is a Danish actor who gained international recognition for his leading roles in Ruben Östlund's film THE SQUARE (2017 Palme d'Or Cannes IFF) and Robert Eggers' film THE NORTHMANN (2022). IN 2019, he played the role of Sasha Mann in the final season of THE AFFAIR and the lead role of Count Dracula in the BBC/Netflix series DRACULA (2020), which brought him widespread fame. For his role in THE SQUARE, he was the first Dane to be honoured with the European Film Award for Best Actor.

Julia Franz Richter
as Gerlinde

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Julia Franz Richter is an Austrian actress. She studied acting at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. She already made several guest appearances at the Schauspielhaus Graz during her studies. From 2016-2018 she was a member of the ensemble at the Munich Volkstheater. She was nominated for the prestigious Nestroy Prize 2022 in the Best Actress category. She regularly appears in front of the camera for TV series and films. She first caused a stir with her feature film debut, the coming-of-age drama L'ANIMALE by Katharina Mückstein (Berlinale 2018), and was nominated for the Romy 2018 in the Best Young Female category. She received the 2020 Digaonale Acting Award for her role as Lena in the feature film DER TAUCHER. In 2020, she appeared in Christian Petzold's UNDINE alongside Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski. For her leading role in the science fiction film RUBIKON by Magdalena Lauritsch, she was awarded the Jury Prize of the Viennale 2022. She was most recently seen in the thriller LES FANTÔMES by Jonathan Millet (2024, Cannes IFF) and DER PFAU by Bernhard Wenger (2024, Venice - Settimana della Critica).

MAIN
CREW

Director: Johanna Moder
Screenplay: Johanna Moder,
Arne Kohlweyer
DoP: Robert Oberrainer
Production Design: Hannes Salat
Costume Design: Stefanie Bieker,
Carola Pizzini
Make up Design: Martine Felber
Sound: Patrick Storck, Nils Kirchhoff,
Gina Keller, Guido Keller
Editing: Karin Hammer
Music: Diego Ramos Rodriguez
Coproducer: Katrin Renz,
Viola Fügen,
Michael Weber
Producer: Sabine Moser,
Oliver Neumann (FreibeuterFilm AT)

TECHNICAL
DETAILS

Original title: Mother's Baby
International title: Mother's Baby
Duration: 108 min
Aspect Ratio: 2,39:1
Format: DCP
Sound: Dolby 5.1
Year: 2025
Original language: German
Countries of production: Austria, Switzerland, Germany
Production Companies: FreibeuterFilm GmbH
Co-production Companies: tellfilm GmbH, Match Factory Productions GmbH
Supported by: Austrian Film Institute,ÖFI+, Vienna Film Fund, Federal Office of Culture (FOC), Zürcher Filmstiftung, MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, Hessen Film & Medien, Funding Programm STEP
In Coproduction with: ORF Film-/Fernsehabkommen, SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen / SRG SSR and blue Entertainment

INTERNATIONAL
PRESS

PREMIER
Simone Devlin
Paul Ockelford
MothersBaby@premiercomms.com

National (Austria)
apomat* büro für kommunikation
Mahnaz Tischeh
tischeh@apomat.at

National (Switzerland)
Filmcoopi
Claire Honegger
hc@filmcoopi.ch