Noomi Rapace is teasing her portrayal of Mother Teresa in the upcoming film “Mother,” in which the multi-faceted Swedish talent tackles the role of the Catholic saint when she was just an ordinary woman, Variety reports. Speaking at the Sarajevo Film Festival this week, where she’s part of a competition jury headed by Paul Schrader, Rapace said she was drawn to the offbeat portrait of Teresa because she wasn’t interested in doing a conventional biopic. “She was no saint,” Rapace said. “She’s a quite complex character.” “Mother,” which marks the English-language debut of North Macedonian filmmaker Teona Strugar Mitevska, will follow seven days during a pivotal moment in the life of the revered saint, when she decides to leave the Loreto Entally convent in Calcutta and launch her own order. The complete article can be read over at Variety.
She’s waiting for permission from the Vatican to go out on her calling, her mission, to leave the convent and start her mission outside. No one has done what she’s asking permission to do. It hasn’t been done before. She’s a woman in a man’s world. I’ve felt like I’m against all odds many times and finding my voice and myself in different foreign situations, so I think I can relate to her stubbornness and her conviction that she needed to do this, even if it was going to be painful. She talks a lot about darkness and her doubts. She once said, ‘If I will ever become a saint, it will surely be one of darkness,’ which is very powerful. Both me and Teona somehow have some connecting tissue to Mother Teresa’s determined stubbornness, and how she takes on something and how she doesn’t back away and just pushes through. I can relate to that, that you keep fighting for something you believe in, even if everyone is telling you it’s not going to happen. Or no one else can see it. (Noomi Rapace, Variety, August 21, 2024)
Read posts from the archive:
December 29th, 2017
December 16th, 2017
January 22nd, 2024
