Lioness (2020)

Directed by: Philip Besamusca | 10 minutes | short film, drama | Actors: Shira Thousand, Ellen Parren, Mouad Ben-Chaib

With ‘Lioness’ we dive right into the action: two girls are fighting in the hallway of a building. It may be a school building, but it turns out to be a youth institution. One of the girls is Sylvie and we soon see that she is heavily pregnant. In the relative safety of her own room, she calmly addresses her unborn baby, but only one thing needs to be done for the anger to flare up again.

And that is what happens: a judge determines that Sylvie must offer her baby for adoption immediately after birth. She is not considered suitable to raise the child, the safety of the unborn child is paramount. Sylvie doesn’t even wait for the rest of the verdict, but storms out of the room.

What is special about ‘Lioness’ is that we almost never see Sylvie directly in the picture. We mainly see her filmed from the back, very occasionally from the side. Yet her body language expresses a powerful character. Leading actress Shira Duizend knows how to live up to the title of the short film.

What Bastiaan Tichler’s scenario also succeeds in is the duality of the issue: on the one hand, we see enough evidence that the baby may indeed be better off in a family that does have the possibilities to offer peace, cleanliness and regularity. , but on the other hand Sylvie’s choice is certainly understandable and defendable.