The 19th century was very harsh for women. They were considered the property of men. Married women couldn’t make a career even with their own money, because they had to ask for authorization for anything.”
Maria Montessori (1870-1952) managed to escape the male yoke, although she paid a very high price for her independence. Léa Todorov (Paris, 1982) – daughter of the famous philosopher Tzvetan Todorov – previously worked “on a documentary that dealt with how pedagogy changed in the interwar period. Montessori was one of the protagonists, I researched her and I realized that her personal life was also very interesting, because she is an example of how women are always divided between the professional, the private and the will to be free. ” .
With the result of this research, Todorov wrote the script and then directed María Montessori, a film that delves into the most intimate facet of the pedagogue. The film, which screened at the BCN Film Fest last week and now hits the big screen, begins in Paris in 1900 where Lily is a star on stage. Men adore her, fall at her feet and fight a duel for her. But Lily hides a secret, she has a daughter, Tina, who suffers from mental retardation. She has kept her away from her, but when the little girl returns home, Lily finds it necessary to flee so that no one discovers the girl’s existence.
He takes refuge in Rome and there they tell him about a doctor who can help him, Maria Montessori. The young Italian has studied medicine at a time when women’s access to university is practically prohibited. María maintains a romantic relationship with a colleague, Giuseppe Montesano, and together they run a center where they teach children with special needs.
Maria is convinced that her students can learn just like any other child and has developed a method to facilitate their learning. But, like LiLy, Maria also hides a secret: she has a two-year-old son from her relationship with Giuseppe. A son who is growing up in the country with another family. Maria wants to have her child next to her, but she can’t.
“Giuseppe proposed to Montessori, but she did not want to get married, because marriage would have ended her professional life. She couldn’t raise the child in her parents’ house either, because that would have embarrassed them,” adds the director.
Little by little, Lily, a fictional character, and Montessori become friends and find a way to help each other. “Lily was important to me because she is a woman who is forced to deal with a daughter with special needs and she doesn’t even know where to start. I also have a daughter with special needs and it seemed like a good starting point for the film,” says Todorov.
Tina has ended up in the perfect place, because Montessori has managed, thanks to her method, for her students, “who were hopeless by the prevailing school system, to learn to read, write or add.” “The Montessori method encourages the child to learn and compare while touching objects, allows him to order through experimentation and makes it easier for him to assimilate things on his own.”
Todorov emphasizes that his film “is not a film about method and if someone goes to the cinema to see it with that idea, they will be disappointed.” But he does defend the system invented by Montessori, which “departs from the one that still prevails in many places in France where you have to learn things by heart and the teacher believes that all students should do it in the same way.”
Her own daughter has benefited from this form of teaching and is also one of the actresses in the film, “the one who cries, because I can’t let the children cry, only my own,” she smiles. The Maria Montessori team began working with the little ones who are part of the cast “long before filming began, we set up a workshop where there were five or six children and as many adults and also a choreographer and musicians, we promoted knowledge among them because the relationship between the children was fundamental and then we rehearsed the scenes and looked for the perfect one so that each one could show their abilities and feel comfortable at the same time.”
