A welcome benefit to the increase of Black female filmmakers are more honest portrayals of the experiences of Black mothers, especially those fighting against the tide of an uncaring system that seems set against them. Savanah Leaf’s glowing debut feature Earth Mama hits you in the gut with its authenticity, its beauty, and unflinching look at a single mother navigating the hurdles of the foster care system.
The Bay Area drama is also the debut of Tia Nomore as Gia, and it’s the kind of stunning introduction that promises a bright future. Nomore, a battle rapper discovered during Leaf’s area-wide search for a non-actor to play the role, captures Gia’s fierceness, her protective maternal spirit, and her fragility as a mother with two kids in foster care, while also 37 weeks into another pregnancy. While Gia struggles to meet the demands to get her kids back, made tougher by one’s coldness to this fight, she deals with their non-existent father and a community that takes as much as it gives. While the people closest to Gia often show support, they’re also enablers of her personal demons. Gia’s a recovering drug addict, working a crappy part-time job at a photo booth. Her sister sells drugs right out of their home. But what is there for Gia to do? Where can she go? Can she even provide for her kids if she were to get them back?
And then there’s the ticking clock of the baby to come. Leaf isn’t out to make a Hollywood-ized movie about a perfect mother’s easy journey to getting her children back. Gia is no saint, although many of the choices she makes are borne out of desperation. In one scene, shot boldly by Manchester By The Sea cinematographer Jody Lee Pipes with the same grounded ferocity, we see Gia swipe a package of diapers right out of a mother’s stroller and stride back to her car, the other woman shouting at her from a distance.
Even those whose job it is to help Gia don’t seem to be on her side much of the time. While one social worker doesn’t seem to care at all about her plight, the soft-spoken and caring Miss Carmen (Erika Alexander) goes too far in the other direction. Concerned about Gia’s fitness to properly provide for her children, she introduces the idea of an open adoption that would allow Gia some visitation rights. She means well, but Black mothers are too often encouraged to give up their children when white mothers in similar situations are not, and Gia is a fighter.
If there’s one thing that comes shining through in Earth Mama it’s that Gia won’t ever give up, no matter what is thrown at her. Her story, one created by Leaf and Waves actress Taylor Russell, is so encouraging, empowering, and believable it’s a wonder some of the fantastical elements that undermine it. Veering into horror, Gia imagines pulling an overlong umbilical cord out of her gaping belly, while later a sonogram shows a fetus that looks like a demon spawn. Taking a polar opposite tract, Gia is occasionally shown, angelic and natural, in the Redwood forests. Leaf continues to struggle with tone in a melodramatic final act, but Earth Mama is kept steady by Nomore’s gripping performance, exemplified by a gut-wrenching address that is like she is speaking right to our souls.
Earth Mama is in theaters now courtesy of A24.
