Hot Milk

Based on the acclaimed 2016 novel by critically adored novelist Deborah Levy and with a terrific cast led by Fiona Shaw, Emma Mackey and Vicky Krieps, Hot Milk is the directorial debut of playwright and screenwriter (Disobedience, Colette, Ida) Rebecca Lenkiewicz, set to premiere in Competition at the Berlinale.

Set in the scorching heat of a Spanish summer, Rose (Shaw) and her daughter Sofia (Mackey) travel to the seaside town of Almería to consult Gómez (Vincent Perez), an enigmatic healer who may hold the key to Rose’s mysterious illness – an unexplained paralysis which has left her confined to a wheelchair. In the sun-drenched town, Sofia, trapped until now by her mother’s condition, begins to shed her inhibitions as she is drawn to the magnetic charms of a free-spirited traveller, Ingrid (Krieps). Sofia’s increased freedom becomes too much for her controlling mother, and as the hot sun beats down, their relationship simmers with pent-up resentments and bitterness, threatening to tear the fragile threads that hold them together apart.