Screenwriter Kata Wéber On

The Heartbreaking True Story

That Inspired ‘Pieces Of A
Woman’
Kata Wéber’s latest film, Pieces of a Woman, takes a close-up look at a relationship in
the wake of a tragedy. Here, the playwright and screenwriter explains how she found
her heroine

In 2017, I began work on a play inspired by the legal case of Agnes

Geréb, the pioneer of home birthing in Hungary (where I am from),
who had been forbidden to practise for 10 years on account of her
supposed neglect of two babies who had died (she had unsuccessfully
appealed against the decision, and her prosecution had been described
as a witch hunt). In Hungary, midwives occupy a highly politicised
position: while home births are lawful, legal loopholes make it difficult
for women to give birth anywhere but the hospital. It shook me to see
how the case polarised public opinion, and how, without the least
medical evidence, people immediately took up positions, talking about
doctors as a medical mafia on the one hand, and about supporters of
home birth as a religious sect on the other.

But I did not want to write a political piece. What struck me was the
way the mothers involved were represented: how their bodies and
histories were objectified, and the way in which they were caught in the
crossfire of contrasting ideologies. I recall one of the mothers quietly
and moderately saying of Geréb that she did everything to try to save
the children, and I knew then that I had found the heroine of my story.
Here was a woman who was able, even in the face of unimaginable loss,
to forgive. For her, there was nothing to be found in blaming the
system, or blaming the midwife, or seeking justice by way of a prison
sentence for the death of her child. It was as if someone had lit a candle
at the bottom of a deep, dark pit.

Her desire to move forward without contempt reminded me of my

parents. My mother and father were of the generation that refused to
leave Hungary after surviving the Holocaust and the communism that
followed it. They were not among those who fled to the West nor those
who chose a new life, and, unlike many of their contemporaries, they
were not interested in revenge. Instead, they learnt to lay down their
arms. They simply wanted peace, and recognised that achieving peace
creates the ability to be reborn.

After hearing that mother speak, I knew I wanted to describe the

precise effects of a similar loss on a fictitious woman, and through her
explore the myriad ways we mourn and find peace in the aftermath of
unimaginable trauma.

The play – which premiered in Warsaw in 2018 – would eventually

become my film, Pieces of a Woman, starring Vanessa Kirby as
Martha, a young woman whose home birth ends in tragedy. The film
follows what happens to Martha and her partner, Sean, as they both try
to navigate through their shattered world, and attempt to find a way to
survive it.

During my writing process, I went to countless meetings with bereaved

mothers. Each and every one of those encounters was a shock – not
only because they brought me face to face with the precariousness of
life, but because it brought home the tragedy of these women. Lots of
them spoke of survivor’s guilt. Others, like many who have experienced
trauma, mentioned their sense of helplessness. They talked about the
way friends and relations had turned away from them, and how
foundations they thought were firm had been badly shaken. Some lost
loved ones because they tried to continue life as before, others because
they were incapable of doing so. Some were blamed for cracking under
pressure, others because they had not broken enough. Very few could
relate to those around them. All of them, like my parents, had to find a
way to live surrounded by the ruined trappings of the past.

Isolation was a word that almost everyone used to describe their

experience. But the fact of the matter is we cannot deal with these
tragedies alone. There is a common saying that it isn’t minutes but
years that make a mother. I disagree. Every one of the women I spoke
to saw herself as the mother of a lost child. Healing comes from shared
experience, but so often it can be hard to find, even with those closest
to us.

One of the main stories I wanted to tell in Pieces of a Woman is how

relationships overcome the aftermath of trauma. The unavoidable fact
is many do not. Some couples become closer, others find they are
incapable of being together after such an event. Often, it’s not a
question of moving on, or not moving on, but of trying to understand
each other’s grief, the expression of which can sometimes be alien. I
was eager to depict equally authentic images of both a man and a
woman who, after finding themselves floating in space in the wake of
losing a child, not only lose track of the guiding points tying them to
reality, but lose each other as well. Above all, I wanted – rather than to
paint a picture of a relationship in crisis – to show a love that had run
out of words.

I have never believed in art as illustration, as simply a description of

the world as it is. It is the evocative power of art that has always
interested me; its ability to address what we cannot state in words. My
true subject of the film is not the social and political attitudes to home
birth, but the experiences of one particular mother. That mother could
just as easily be me, or any of us. To be a woman in the 21st century
may not be a matter of constant suffering, but even now we must
decide who controls our bodies, and to whom we pass the
responsibility of our born and unborn children.

When my play debuted in 2018 and was well-received, it was, for me, a
sign that we can break the taboo and dissolve the centuries-old
consensus regarding appropriate forms of mourning. I hope my film
continues that. Because the only way to begin to build a new life is
without burden and guilt. We need to learn to lay down arms and find
peace.