Filmmakers Alys Tomlinson and Cécile Embleton discovered Vera, the subject of their recent documentary film Mother Vera (2024) in Grabarka, Poland, while travelling through religious pilgrimage sites across the world for Alys’s Ex-Voto series. The image of Vera is compelling and vulnerable: there is an intimacy in her direct gaze, which looks straight into the lens of the large format Victorian camera like an invitation. Her face, isolated against her dark veil and the soft blur of trees, draws immediate connection – and held at the corners of her mouth and eyes is a subtle expression – a weight - an introspection.
The collection earned Alys the title of Photographer of the Year at the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards. Not long after, she and Cécile travelled to Belarus, to the monastery where Vera lived and worked. There, they learnt of her journey into Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which was rooted in a turbulent past marked by addiction and hardship, including contracting HIV from the partner who would eventually abandon her. The monastery represented a refuge from this painful experience, not only for Vera but for the many others living there who have left prison, suffer from mental illness and grapple with various dependencies.
The beautifully drawn out, formal restraint of the film with its long purposeful takes of habited nuns engaged in liturgical practice and daily cycles of service within the wild and vast Belarusian countryside that they are isolated within – bring to mind the contemplative, quiet austerity of Carl Dreyer’s Ordet and Gertrude as well as Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest. Like Chris Marker’s La Jetée, composed entirely of black and white stills, memory and time are deeply intertwined within Veera’s reflection on the journey that led her to this place of solitude.
The film was composed over six winters when Alys and Cécile visited the monastery. It is a deeply meaningful portrait of a person processing a painful past. We meet Vera just as she is getting ready to move away from her monastic life, and for that reason, the film uniquely highlights the institution’s role as a centre for social work and healing and a space for recovery and transformation.
Mother Vera was supported by Sundance, won first prize at Locarno First Look 2023, and most recently London Film Festival where it took home the Grierson Award. Cécile is a British-French director, editor and cinematographer. Her directorial debut, The Watchmaker screened at Hot Docs, Dok Leipzig and SXSW in addition to Open City Documentary Festival, where it was nominated as Best UK Short and to Boston International Festival where it picked up the Grand Jury Prize. Alys is an editorial and fine art documentary photographer based in London. In 2019 Ex-Voto was published by GOST Books in addition to her book The Gli Isolani (The Islanders) in 2022. Alys’s work can be found in the National Portrait Gallery (London), The Rencontres d’Arles Collection, The Bodleian Library, and AmberSide Collection.
Agnès: In addition to Dreyer, Bresson, and Marker’s work, the film—where each beautifully balanced shot could function as a standalone photograph—also reminds me of Graciela Iturbide’s black-and-white photography. It’s not only her preoccupation with religion, ritual, and the tension between tradition and modernity in contemporary Latin American society, but also the sense of complicity and trust she developed with her subjects. These were often socially and politically independent women. This approach set her apart from the candid style of traditional street photographers. It was interesting to learn that you both studied literature at university, so I’m wondering if your background influenced your approach to making this film?
Alys: We've both got backgrounds in literature and photography, although mine is in English and Cécile's is in Hispanic literature. We were certainly aligned in this sense of a slow unravelling in the storytelling. One way we achieved that is through these still, held shots that, as you mentioned, almost look like singular photographs. Then, you might notice a tiny bit of movement, a small gesture. In terms of our backgrounds, although we come from slightly different places, they converge in this sense. That was something we discussed when it came to the film’s aesthetics – how we wanted to hold the viewer so that you're almost suspended in time.
Cécile: ‘Suspended’ is a good word, I think, especially in relation to the editing, which took a long time. It took time to craft, but we managed to create something that holds the viewer in this way. The narrative is nonlinear, and we aimed to build something that has a density of time. It’s very layered, and as you move through Vera’s world, you gradually discover the different elements – the horses, the men – and how they feed into her, how they connect and build her story. Once that foundation is set, those layers become crucial. For example, there is a moment when she talks about how her partner, Oleg, left her and the men are looking into the fire, by then, you understand that Vera and the men share a similar backstory. They are all looking collectively into the past, their past and hers. So yes, the suspension of the viewer is key, and it’s what people have commented on.
Both Alys and I, in my film work and her photography, share a very minimalistic approach, and that’s where we’ve aligned. We often ask how little we can give, which produces a desire in a viewer to understand and to work it out. Hopefully, the space we leave in the film allows for that.
Agnès: Of course, monastic life is a suspension of everyday time, it follows a completely different set of practices. How long did you spend in the monastery?
Alys: You lose all sense of time in the monastery – we felt that while filming. There aren’t really any clocks; daylight is often absent. I’ve lost track of how long we spent there – I think we went five or six times over many years during different seasons. You see that in the film, which moves from a very warm, humid summer to a bitterly cold, dramatic winter, thick with snow. Our trips varied from a week to six weeks on the final visit, and because we stayed in the monastery accommodation, we really got to know the sisters' day-to-day lives. We were immersed in their routines; we attended prayers and liturgies and dined with them. In many ways, we became part of their community, and they were very generous and accepting.
Agnès: Vera is quite young, younger than the typical image we might have of an Orthodox nun. Through her narrative, we learn what led her to the context within which we find her - her involvement with drug abuse and the dependencies she created for others. She discloses these facts with a sombre clarity; her delivery is almost ascetic, like a religious confession. Do you consider the film to be a kind of confession?
Alys: In a sense, Vera’s narrative is a form of confession. I think perhaps our backgrounds in literature have helped us shape how we reveal her story to the viewer - it’s drawn out, and you have to work to piece it all together.
Cécile: To me, it is a confession, though not in a strictly religious sense. It’s a human confession, one she makes to herself as much as to anyone else. It’s about coming to terms with her past, learning to trust herself, and forgiving herself – but on her own terms. Of course, she’s within a religious setting, and she needed that institution to hold her together initially, given where she was coming from.
Agnès: Although the film is set within the monastery, it subtly separates Vera as an individual from her cloistered setting. It’s compelling to see the monastery’s practical role in rehabilitation, almost like a form of social work, providing structure and purpose. At the time that we meet her, she is preparing to move on from this setting.
Alys: She was quite a senior sister, having been there for so long, and she was a mentor to some of the younger nuns, so she was an integral part of the community. But she had also carved out a degree of independence from the monastery. She spent a lot of time with the horses and out in nature, and she developed very close relationships, particularly in guiding the men in rehabilitation. So, while she was part of this highly controlled institution, she maintained a free-spirited side that sometimes influenced her decisions and occasionally got her into trouble. Not serious trouble, but I don’t think she ever really loved following rules. It was challenging for her, to be in that environment.
Still from Mother Vera, courtesy of Alys Tomlinson
Agnès: She observes that she’s always been the kind of person that others are influenced by.
Alys: She understands the strength of her character and that she is, in some ways, alluring to people, and that she can exert an element of control over others if she wants to – not in a manipulative way necessarily, but you know, she's a powerful character. People listen to her, and people look up to her, and I think they always have.
Agnès: Vera’s bond with the horses is a key part of the film. I’m thinking of the scene where she’s playing with one; it’s so at ease with her, rolling around on the floor while she curls up like you might do with a cat. There’s this amazing shot of her lying over the horse with her arms through its front legs and around its neck. Why did you choose to concentrate on this aspect of Vera’s life, was it a way to represent her strength of character?
Cécile: Her relationship with horses is very important to her. It highlights the contrast between her earthly, sensual nature – she is someone with a strong appetite for experiencing the physical realm of life – and the opposite, which is her spiritual side. These two aspects are connected. She isn’t searching in a conventional spiritual sense; I believe that the search for the spiritual is reflected in her connection with the animals. and I think of the horses as her source of peace. During our first trip to Belarus, we filmed the scene where she’s lying on the horse and saw her in a completely free and blissful state. It was quite astonishing to witness.
Alys: I think there were times in the monastery when she felt that the horses were the only sentient beings, with whom she could truly communicate, and they brought her a level of solace and comfort.
Cécile: She mentions that when she's walking with her sister and the donkeys, she finds nature to be so beautiful – without humans. I think she feels happiest with animals.
Alys: Without the complications that human interaction can bring. There’s a level of innocence being connected with nature, with animals in that way, brings.
Agnès: On the other hand, inside the monastery, it’s very dark and feels quite labyrinthic.
Cécile: Definitely. I think that the image following the cloak has a labyrinthine quality, and many of the still shots inside the crypt underground create a sense of enclosure. We were working with layers, contrasting the expansive open nature shots with the sense of enclosure. We use Vera’s monologue mainly in the underground crypt with candlelight, which feels secretive and hidden. Transformation happens in the darkness and this juxtaposition between light and dark is quite classical. A big part of Vera’s journey is that interplay between darkness and light, and we wanted to evoke a sense of expansion by moving between finite details within the monastery to the infinite open spaces outside – this is a major aspect of the film’s language.
BTS of Mother Vera, courtesy of Alys Tomlinson/Sony Future Filmakers Award
Agnès: Is this why you decided to shoot in black and white?
Cécile: The black and white came from the photograph that Alys had taken of Vera in Grabarka. When we started filming, it was a clear choice for her, but it took me a little while to understand. It emphasises the dark and the light, the shadows, and the extremity of her story – and the stories of all those people who are living there – who have experienced difficult things in life. They are on the edge in many ways, in a process of transformation and purification. Being there is like a collective ritual, a purification.
There’s a scene where the men go into freezing water outside, in the dark. The extremity of this moment, with their bare flesh and the icy water, is like a collective purgatory. The black and white enhances these contrasts. We used many shots from the extreme winters of Belarus, they create a feeling of coldness and emphasise the fragility of human life and the warmth of the community within these vast, empty spaces. They highlight how much we need love and compassion - to be taken care of.
Agnès: Can you tell me a little bit about how the photograph of Vera came about?
Alys: We were hanging around in the small hilltop village of Grabarka, which is full of crosses and having to be very patient, waiting for interesting faces to appear. Vera was there on her own with a donation box hung around her neck, trying to raise money for the monastery. She was often sent out for these tasks, so she was probably a little bored, standing still for hours on a very hot day.
As soon as we spotted her, we thought she looked incredible – there was something about her that drew us in. So, we approached her, not knowing what to expect because, of course, you never know what kind of reaction you're going to get. We didn't know if she spoke English or if she would be open to being photographed, but she did a kind of dramatic flourish of her cloak and said, “Of course, ladies.”
We led her to an opening in the forest and took a photograph with an old-fashioned camera of her almost appearing out of the trees and out of the light, quite ethereal. As soon as we’d taken her photograph, we realised we had a compulsion to know more about her. She was immediately intriguing. It was a very lucky encounter.
Agnès: And how did the idea of film come about?
Alys: Well, she immediately invited us to Belarus within about the first five minutes of meeting her. She was very open, and I think, was quite interested and excited by us being artists and independent women making work.
Cécile: Alys’s photograph also won the Sony Prize – so Vera’s portrait, which was kind of the star image, had gone viral before we’d even managed to tell her. As part of the award, Alys had been given a grant to make a piece of digital work and so she went to Belarus to make a kind of short film as a starter. In getting to know her in a much more personal way and the world she was living in, it became clear that there was a much deeper story to be told about this woman.
I felt on a personal level, a very strong connection to Vera – in a spiritual sense. I could feel an alignment with her quest, and I could feel that she wanted to tell us something – that she could tell us. It was energetic. It was like an unspoken collaboration between the three of us that there was something to be explored.
BTS of Mother Vera, courtesy of Alys Tomlinson/Sony Future Filmakers Award
Agnès: Why do you think you were interested in religious pilgrimage as a subject?
Alys: It was a bit of a surprise to me. It definitely wasn't a religious calling, and I haven’t converted to any form of institutional religion. I think I've always been, in my photography projects and as a person, very curious about how other people live their lives. I always want to know about people's decisions and their motivations. At that point, I'd been living in London for a long time, and the idea of experiencing a pilgrimage, being in nature, and spending time alone, in a contemplative environment felt healing.
My family is still quite puzzled about why I've spent years of my life devoted to other people’s faith. But there was also certainly an innate fascination in terms of the choice of young women, in particular, to dedicate their lives to a higher power. What draws a person into that? It was a desire to understand a world that I knew very little about. That's often how my projects are driven, and how they start. Cécile’s situation is slightly different.
Cécile: In a way, working with Alys on her first project as an assistant – translating, handling the camera work and certainly going to Lourdes – was a bit like coming home for me. My mother is French Catholic, so mysticism and contemplation were a big part of my life. Today I don’t follow any particular religion, but in my childhood I often saw her meditating, and she would play Gregorian chants in the kitchen. So, it was very meaningful for me to work with Alys, who comes from a completely different background, as an atheist, but is still deeply interested in spiritual life.
Meeting Vera was incredible; here was someone with both a sense of strong spiritual searching and an earthly, grounded presence. It felt so relevant to me, like I was a mirror in a way. I felt an urgency to know her better, almost like starting a relationship where there’s so much to discover. And I guess at that point, I was in a difficult place myself; making independent films isn’t easy. So, when this project came along, it felt like the beginning of a new chapter.
In a way, I hadn’t ever directly addressed spirituality in my work, but it’s always been there as a thread, guiding my search for meaning. This project has really brought that to the forefront for me.
Agnès Houghton-Boyle is a critic and programmer based in London. Her writing features in Talking Shorts Magazine and Fetch London.
