Event Description
After the film screening, Professor Nancy Scheper-Hughes will engage Dr. Theidon in a discussion about her research and its translation to the screen.
Synopsis
Nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for a Foreign Language Film, “The Milk of Sorrow” (“La Teta Asustada”), was inspired by the work of Dr. Kimberly Theidon. A medical anthropologist studying Latin America, Dr. Theidon compiled the testimonies of women from the Peruvian Andes who were mistreated or violated during the political violence of the 1980s. Some of these women spoke of an illness, “la teta asustada,” in which the mother’s trauma was passed on to her children through her breast milk. Fausta, the film’s protagonist, struggles to overcome this affliction and escape the legacy of the past.