Maria Montessori | Dir: Léa Todorov | ★ ★ ★ ★
More than half a century after her death, Maria Montessori’s influence can still be seen in 35,000 schools that flourish in the world today. The Montessori Method is associated with a child-centric form of educating young children and adolescents, and this Italian film traces the origins.
Being one of the first women to attend medical school in Italy, Maria Montessori was faced with hostility and harassment because of her gender. Her presence in a classroom with a naked cadaver was deemed inappropriate and she had to perform dissections of cadavers alone, after hours.
The film starts in 1900 when Montessori (Jasmine Trinca) was working alongside Giuseppe Montesano (Raffaele Esposito) at a school which used “scientific methods” to educate children with learning difficulties or as they were called at the time – “idiots”, and also instructed teachers in these methods.
Montesano and Montessori had a child together but if Montessori married her lover, she was expected to stop working professionally, so the child born out of wedlock was kept a secret and looked after by a wet nurse.
The film introduces a fictional character who is also keeping her child a secret and having her cared for by someone else. French actress and courtesan Lili d’Alengy (Leïla Bekhti) flees from Paris to Rome when her 9 year-old daughter Tina (Rafaelle Sonneville-Caby) is returned to her after the carer dies.
The two women end up helping each other in a world that was built by men, for men.
The film features neurodiverse children and teenagers in its cast and writer/director Léa Todorov captures the incredible obstacles and successes of a woman who revolutionised ideas about education at the beginning of the 20th century.
See Maria Montessori at the Italian Film Festival which screens at Palace Raine Square from 25 September, Luna Leederville from 3 October and Windsor and Luna on SX Cinemas from 4 October. Details are available on italianfilmfestival.com.au and the participating cinemas.
Lezly Herbert
