AFI Fest Review: Celia Rowlson-Hall's 'Ma' Is A Spellbinding And Fiercely Original Cinematic Experience

A Madonna in a flimsy oversized t-shirt emerges from the desert. Though her headscarf is a towel, and she sports red cowboy boots on her feet and a thousand-yard ice blue gaze, there’s an undeniable familiarity to this image of the Virgin Mary. In her feature debut “Ma,” star/writer/director/choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall has crafted a truly unique film. Coupling one of the oldest stories with innovative and fresh filmmaking, Rowlson-Hall utilizes familiar iconography, sound design, and choreographed movement to create a silent film that is anything but quiet. The combination of surreal tone, strange characters, sun-drenched cinematography, and entirely visual movement-based language creates a heady and spellbinding cinematic experience. 

The story itself is a play on a classic—boy meets girl. In this case, boy meets girl when she wordlessly climbs atop the windshield of his car in the middle of the desert. The boy is Daniel (Andrew Pastides), and the girl is Ma...