Grey Zone

Slovakian filmmaker and photographer Daniela Meressa Rusnoková’s twins were born in ‘the grey zone’, as the doctor called it. In this documentary, she transmutes the unspokenly common and often traumatic reality of premature birth into a deeply poetic work of art.

‘I was expecting a 40-week pregnancy just like any other woman,’ says Daniela Meressa Rusnoková in the voice-over. But then: ‘Shock. Unexpectedly, it was just 24.’ The so-called ‘grey zone’ applies to 22-24 week of pregnancy. While the foetus is perceived as a human being, children born around that time haven’t fully developed vital organs, which puts them at high risk, also of future health problems.

Rusnoková interweaves her own experiences of fear, shame, despair, and hope with those of other mothers in similarly anguished circumstances. The result is a complex, even wrenching meditation on a woman’s right to privacy and bodily autonomy. And on the pervasive fear and neglect in society of children born prematurely or with special needs or disabilities.