Conversations in a veterinarian’s waiting room: Liza, director Macarena Albalustri’s over-ten-year-old cat, doesn’t eat any more. The imminent death of a beloved pet evokes memories of another loss, that of her mother, who died ten years ago and whom Albalustri hardly remembers. As she is coping with the grief over her cat, buried feelings and questions are uncovered again, an emotional search begins. Using photos, letters and objects from her childhood, the director tries to re-awaken memories – in herself and in others. She talks to persons who were close to her mother, to the latter’s friends and her father. She even manages to find the psychotherapist consulted by her mother at the time. The conversations are always about coping with loss, dying and one’s own death. It’s a very intimate film essay about saying farewell, about developing rituals and personal forms of mourning which everyone has to find and invent for themselves to deal with the pain of farewell.

Frederik Lang