Creators share a deeply intimate story of grief and healing in ‘Pieces of a Woman’

A mother mends together broken parts into something whole in “Pieces of a Woman.”

Directed by Kornél Mundruczó and written by Kata Wéber – partners who embarked on the film to process their own loss – “Pieces of a Woman” is a journey through grief and healing. For her portrayal of Martha Weiss (Vanessa Kirby), Kirby was nominated for best actress accolades at the Academy Awards as well as at the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards. Though specific in its depiction of a mother who loses her newborn baby soon after experiencing the joy of her birth, executive producer and alumnus Stuart Manashil said the emotional journey that the protagonist Martha embarks on is universal. This poignant quality of the script demanded that it be made into a movie, he said.

“You were immediately moved by it – even though it’s a story that (you) personally never experienced – you felt the pain, you felt the emotion,” Manashil said. “I’m not a woman and I’ve never lost a child, but I could definitely relate to the feeling of incredible loss and having to figure out how to get over that.”

The emotional nuances in the film come directly from the writer and director’s lives. Mundruczó said he and Wéber experienced a miscarriage together, which inspired the story and made the project very personal to them. After grieving silently and leaving their loss unaddressed, Mundruczó said they turned to art and creation as an outlet to process their shared grief and speak about it with truth – a truth they hope will resonate with audiences.

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The influence of their journey is evident in how the film unflinchingly tells the story of the death of a newborn, which Mundruczó said is rarely depicted on screen with this kind of realism and empathy. Opening the movie with a 24-minute uncut birth scene that ends in the passing of the newborn child gives the audience an indication of the depth of emotion present throughout the movie. Mundruczó said putting this ambitious and intense one-take scene at the beginning felt natural and necessary to catalyze the subsequent drama of the story.

“Traumas are like that – it kind of crashes and it’s changed your life,” he said. “I (chose) to create a long take … to be as close to Martha as possible, to be as close to the lost (baby) as possible so you (understand) a little bit of her trauma and then you understand her decisions later.”

Much of the tension and energy of the opening scene comes from its lack of cuts, a choice that director of photography Benjamin Loeb said was made to play with the idea of time. Loeb said the pushing and pulling of time was a way of allowing the audience to better understand Martha’s experience of giving birth.

“We really wanted to produce something where the audience didn’t have a chance to really look away or take a breath, and at the same time, create something that was obviously linear and shot in one go … but had moments where it did sort of expand this idea of time,” Loeb said. “(Mundruczó) really wanted the camera to have curiosity, (and) especially in the beginning, to have a soul.”

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Overall, he said the aim of the cinematography was to bring life into the film – despite its somber plot – and avoid being overly cinema verite. He said he inhabited the eye of the camera and made himself an invisible presence to capture the scene as closely as he could. In this, he said sensitivity and empathy were not only imbued in the film’s writing and direction, but also in the camera and its gaze.

Placing trust that everyone involved with the film would make the right choices – like an actor’s inflections or a crew member’s techniques – was also crucial, Loeb said. And for Mundruczó, this paid off when Martin Scorsese, an executive producer for the film, told him “Pieces of a Woman” was more an experience than a movie. Mundruczó said he wants audiences to have this same cinematic experience to reflect on their own lives and grow from the introspection.

“Crazy things that have happened after the premiere in Venice, and since we (have gotten) letters from all over the world, sharing their own stories, and that was very meaningful for us,” Mundruczó said. “It became a little bit more than a movie.”