Episode 08: Her Mothers with Asia Der and Sari Haragonics

Featuring a conversation with Asia Der and Sari Haragonics on their debut feature documentary, Her Mothers (2020), which had its world premiere at Hot Docs. 

The film is an intimate tale of love and freedom. With a sensitive lens, directors Asia Dér and Sári Haragonics follow Virág and her partner, Nóra, through the long process of adoption. However, as the rising tides of hate and homophobia in Hungary simmer, their lives hit a boiling point, and they must face the difficult decision of leaving their country behind.

Krisztina Meggyes facilitates the conversation.

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ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

SÁRI HARAGONICS has graduated at the University of Theatre and Film Arts, Budapest with a Masters of Arts in Documentary Film Directing. She is also an honors graduate in media production at the University of Bedfordshire in the UK. Her graduation film, Coming face to face is about what inner springs can one still find inside the family to overcome pain and accept the absence of a Mother. The film has been screened at several festivals and won the ZOOM-IN competition at the Verzio International Documentary Festival in 2015. Sari continues that path in her next documentary-feature, Don’t worry, Sári! about the absence of mothers in her family and how that is affecting their family dynamics. She has recently started her Doctoral studies researching how participatory video can affect our social relations – focusing on underprivileged children and youngsters. 

ASIA DÉR graduated as a documentary director from the Doc Nomads Masters Program. Her graduation film, Letters from Mom, is an intimate exploration about the director’s connection to her own mother. The film was nominated for the best short film at the Hungarian Film Week. Currently she is doing her doctoral studies about how the relation of the director and the main character effects the dramaturgy and the psyche in longitudinal documentaries. She is working on her second feature length documentary, I haven’t died, about a middle aged man, who is aiming to face his true self after surviving pancreatic cancer. She participated with her films at ZagrebDox Pro, DOCCIRCLE, and the Docu Rough Cut Boutique. She is a presidium member of the Hungarian Documentary Association.