Ma, Cinema, Trauma: A Psychoanalytic Rendition of Qala

Overview

This session is an intimate, psychoanalytic conversation that uses the film Qala as a shared point of reflection. Rather than analysing the film scene by scene or offering definitive interpretations, the gathering invites participants to think about the emotional currents that run through the story — particularly around motherhood, ambition, shame, and the deep hunger to be chosen.

The film is held as a shared object, allowing space to reflect and feel without the pressure to disclose personal experiences. The emphasis is on noticing what moves, unsettles, or lingers, and how these responses resonate internally.

What This Workshop Will Explore

• How cinema can hold difficult psychic material for us, making trauma, longing and dread feel thinkable.
• The mother-daughter relationship as a site of hunger, dependence, rivalry, shame and the wish to be chosen.
• How trauma lives not only in what happens, but in what remains unmet, unseen or unspoken.
• What films stir in us personally, and how shared watching can become a way of thinking together without overexposure.
• The in-between space where art, memory and unconscious life begin to speak to each other.

Who This Is For

• For those drawn to cinema as an emotional and psychic experience.
• For anyone interested in mothering, trauma, attachment and the hidden costs of being loved conditionally.
• For those curious about psychoanalytic ways of reading culture, relationships and inner life.