More than a decade of filming in India shaped my motivation and choices regarding the kind of films I wanted to make there. So when I was approached to write a movie about Mother Teresa, I immediately envisioned the central theme: it would be a film about compassion.

Mother Teresa has delivered a clear and essential message: she believed that Love was the answer to misery, and it had to start with a simple step, one that anyone could take, with the people close to you.
I believe that this advice is still relevant, and I started thinking about the right way to communicate it to a contemporary audience.

Most people know the myth of Mother Teresa but few had an idea of who was the real Teresa, and that includes many who were closely associated with her. A handful of confessors knew that she had lost her faith, but that fact is still largely unknown today. Through extensive research, I have been able to develop a character more true to life, of a woman who lost her lover, her husband, her intimate soul mate, and never recovered from it. She is that way very human, and through this experience of abandonment, she experiences some of the emotions that most of us can identify with. 

I narrowed the time frame from the moment Teresa hears her calling from Jesus to her initial years working in the slum. During this approximately 12-year period, Teresa goes through a complete change, from the intensity of her epiphany to the disillusionment and the realization that her connection with God is lost. Narrowing the time period allows us to build a strong dramatic arc for this character. And it allows us to spend enough time within important scenes so as to feel the emotions that Teresa experienced, as opposed to having a quick illustration of her entire life. This density, I believe, is key to a deeper understanding of Mother Teresa.

To make Teresa’s example relevant today, I thought about finding find a character who could live emotions similar to Teresa’s: the feeling of rejection, the abortion, the adoption… I imagined a modern, non-Christian, non-religious young woman today, and as I saw her coming to life, I saw there were a lot of similarities between these two heroines.  Thus Kavita’s character was created.

Kavita was born in India, in Kolkata, and her parents moved with her to the West when she was only 2 years old. Now in her late twenties, and a trained classical violinist, she is still a bit of a rebel. Kavita cannot pinpoint what she really needs but is in constant rebellion and she’s not sure why.

When Kavita reads the letters that confessed Teresa’s lack of faith, she is impressed by the nun’s pain and loss, and eventually admires her determination. Working in the House of the Dying today creates in her ambivalent feelings about her own pregnancy. The western, educated, young woman that she is does not see any meaning in this world of misery, sickness, and death. Yet she cannot help but be impressed by how everyone is doing their best to survive.

And when she eventually discovers the secret of her origin, she breaks down, overwhelmed with love, a feeling she fought against all these years; she is opening the door to the feeling of compassion. And this emotion fills the vacuum in her life.

Kavita represents the essential quest for the meaning of a younger generation. Her story is told in a more contemporary handheld style. When the angry young woman finds the courage to face herself, her smile will warm up the entire picture.

In contrast to Kavita’s contemporary story, this part will be shot in a colorless style, a reminder of the dark and brutal times in India as it gained Independence.
As Teresa’s internal conflict gets deeper, so do her emotions; the saturation of colors increases slowly.

Eventually, both styles will merge toward the end of the film, as Kavita finds her emotional balance and Teresa, a new purpose in her solitude.