I was a big fan of Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats,” and, especially, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”, so it’s much welcome news that the filmmaker is now working on her fourth feature (via Filmmaker Fund).
Titled “MOTHERLOVE,” Hittman’s film will follow Ana, “a Georgian immigrant in Brooklyn, who takes a job caring for Lori, an elderly woman in Manhattan, where she is forced to navigate end of life issues and complex family dynamics, while haunted by the separation from her own young daughter whom she has left behind in Tbilisi, Georgia.”
Hittman, 44, is a filmmaker who shows rather than tells. That’s her style. It might isolate the average viewer, but for the rest of us, the gifted writer-director has turned into an American indie queen.
“Never Rarely Sometimes, Always,” which was one of the most-listed films on critics top tens back in 2020, was a major breakthrough for Hittman. It was the best film I saw at Sundance that year and, the following month, it won the Silver Bear (second place) at the Berlin Film Festival.