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| Images courtesy of A24 |
British former professional volleyball player for the 2012
Olympics turned music-video director Savannah Leaf behind the short films The
4th Wave and The Heart Still Hums made her directorial
debut with the coming-of-age drama Earth Mama to enormous critical
acclaim for its searing portrait of the problem of out-of-wedlock pregnancies
amid drug addictions and impoverished inabilities to make ends meet. Though doing little to no business without
much wildfire spread via word of mouth, the Super 16mm 1.66:1-framed earthy and
at times hallucinatory drama of understated tension and internal conflict nevertheless
won the Outstanding British Debut award at the 2024 BAFTAs and was named one of
the top ten independent films of 2023 by the National Board of Review. As with Nickel Boys and The Silent
Twins, it represents another bold example of independent Black cinema whose
respective followings remain criminally underrated and long overdue for
discovery by cinephiles and genre fans keen on the splendor of 16mm
cinematography aiding the long and winding road of this otherwise compelling
and quietly powerful nonjudgmental character study.
Twenty-four-year-old Gia (Tia Nomore) is on her third out-of-wedlock
pregnancy with her two children Trey and Shaynah already in foster care. On hard luck, she finds herself pinching
pennies together while frequently being late on child support payments in
between being nonparticipant in parenting classes. Debating offering her current pregnancy up
for future adoption, a move her friend Trina (rapper and singer Doechii) highly
objects to saying it’s a mother’s responsibility to raise her own
children. Trying to earn more time with
her kids while meeting with prospective adopters, it comes to light that Gia’s dreams
of enrolling in college were interrupted by her first pregnancy and her goals
now remain nebulous if not unmotivated.
Further still, tensions with Trina over the matter heighten and the dangers
of relapsing into using hard drugs during pregnancy flare up again, threatening
to undo all of her ‘efforts’ to try and actively become a parent.
Loosely expanded from her short film with Taylor Russell The
Heart Still Hums featuring grainy organic looking 16mm cinematography by Tiny
Furniture cameraman Jody Lee Lipes underscored by an evocative ethereal
soundscape rendered by Kelsey Lu across the Dolby Atmos soundstage, much like Nickel
Boys it is as much a sensory experience as it is a study of a kind of
manmade epidemic. Near a critical
breaking point for the character, a social worker remarks the problem of drug
abuse during pregnancy or motherhood around minors is not an individual problem
so much as it is a social-phenomena created to keep people in place. While the film doesn’t offer up easy answers
to this problem, it absolutely points a spotlight on it and tries to put you
the viewer inside Gia’s shoes even as she makes jarring missteps that are
endemic to many women like herself in her predicament. As with some of the actresses in the film,
Tia Nomore herself is a rapper and as with director Savannah Leaf she makes her
screen debut in Earth Mama in a role that’s hard to imagine being played
by anyone else. Scenes of her in a dream
state frolicking nude through a forest as her swollen pregnant belly protrudes
display a vulnerability and confidence in the actress as a performer ready to
take on the world while disappearing into the dreaminess of her character’s sphere.
Despite Nomore winning the Black Film Critics Circle Rising
Star Award, the British Independent Film Award and Independent Spirit Award for
Best Breakthrough Performance, as aforementioned Earth Mama for all of its
accolades didn’t make much of an impression at the box office and it isn’t
talked about nearly as much as other A24 titles let alone Black films from the
company such as Moonlight or more recently Waves. Which isn’t to say those films aren’t of
equal value, but it is a shame works like Earth Mama against their
pedigree tend to get lost in the shuffle.
In fact there does not appear to be a Blu-ray or even a 4K disc of Earth
Mama in the roster yet, only a 4K digital stream which gets the job done
but it would be nice to have an uncompressed picture and soundtrack. Hopefully in time and through efforts of film
critics trying their best to recommend or inform readership of films worth
telling their friends and family about, the tide will turn. For now it remains a most clandestine and
tragically underseen slice of modern Black cinema whose warm earthy imagery and
intimate close-ups of our heroine’s silent struggles will linger long in the
eyes and hearts of viewers.
--Andrew Kotwicki
