La mondina

Set in early 20th century Piedmont, La Mondina offers an intimate, unique view on motherhood through the lives of two very different women, united by the common desire to step off the beaten path in a society that gives them no voice.
Piedmont, 1913. Lena is a fifteen-year-old orphan who has always worked as a mondina, a weeder, in a rice field of Vercelli’s Cappuccini district.
The sudden death of her best friend marks the end of Lena’s childhood, but also an unexpected new beginning: the landowner’s wife, Grazia Della Rovere, takes an unusual interest in her and invites Lena to follow her to Turin. Behind a facade of wealth and privilege, the life of Mrs. Grazia is full of cracks: an unhappy marriage, an oppressive family, and a brother who has stopped speaking to her without explanation; most of all, an unfulfilled dream of motherhood. Unwillingly, Lena finds herself trapped in a gilded cage, until the rice fields call her back, along with the secret she now carries.