Directors: Cécile Embleton, Alys Tomlinson

Inspired by a striking black and white portrait photograph that co-director and photographer Alys Tomlinson took six years ago while documenting Christian pilgrimage sites in Eastern Europe, this meditative and deeply humane documentary is an intimate, initially elusive profile of the titular nun. For twenty years, Mother Vera has resided in a convent on the outskirts in Minsk in Belarus, she and her sisters living among men who are undergoing drug addiction rehabilitation. Vera is a luminous figure, patient, understanding but also in possession of a mischievous sense of humour, evidenced at one point when she teases the cameraman for staring at her. A visit to her mother and nephews compels Vera to consider her own, harrowing past, the events that led up to her choosing a life of comparative seclusion, and to ponder her options in an uncertain future. Co-directors Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson have fashioned a stirring examination of self-acceptance and healing, and, as might be anticipated from a photographer co-director, the picture is as elegantly composed as any feature with extended watchful close-ups on its subjects. The convent scenes, rendered in beautifully pristine black and white, imbue the events with an intensity redolent of a Dreyer or Bergman picture.

David Willoughby

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