Reflective Encounters

“Medical knowledge and the conceptualisation of male and female sex during the Middle Ages were such that one could argue Medieval people had a more fluid concept of sex and gender than the strict binary that took hold during Victorian times and has held fast ever since. Despite what the title suggests, this film is not set in the middle ages, but rather in what might be the near future, looking at how two separate couples are trying to conceive.

As Mirene and André are trying – and failing – to conceive in the traditional way, questions of fertility start to chip away at André’s masculinity. Meanwhile, Carl and Vicente take a more experimental method – an ovary is injected into Vicente for a few days before being implanted into a surrogate mother. What follows is an enigmatic and ambiguous look at gender, parenthood and relationships elevated by technology. Mirene’s voiceover narration states that “our bodies are never entirely ours,” and the camera gazes out at the endless Atlantic, suggesting an infinite horizon of possibilities.

The future opens up fractures and fluidities within our reach: the trick, Pedro Neves Marques’ film argues, is to keep our minds psychologically open to these changes and to the potential for reworked familial nodes they offer us. Concepts of gender change throughout history – it’s up to us to change with them for the better.”

— Fedor Tot