Céline Roustan
Having kids is universal—everyone is either a parent or a child to one. That universality breeds diversity, and the journey to parenthood onscreen has never conformed to a simple template. That said, while some films have captured medically assisted pregnancy, they are mostly from the future parents’ perspective. With Cycles, S/W alums Pisie Hochheim and Tony Oswald (Seeds, Handheld) focus on what, to us, is a novel twist in the corpus of procreation stories—the chronicle of a single mother who is about to sell her eggs for the last time. This slightly tangential perspective allows us to view the business of modern pregnancy from a new vantage point, and the film, from its factual and logistical aspects to capturing the emotional and physical toll of the experience, depicts this personal story with raw authenticity.
The person at its center is Alicia, who is Oswald’s sister and an involved participant in igniting the project. With the main goal of wanting to facilitate parenthood for others, she began selling her eggs for the first time in her mid-20s, receiving $10,000 for each egg donation cycle. As a single mother, this was a significant sum! However, this next donation is to be Alicia’s last, and when she decided to start the process, she asked Oswald and Hochheim to document it. From this request, Cycles was conceived, and the personal relationship between subject and documentarians allows for a film of rare intimacy, providing clear insight into the process, with a captivating honesty that does not oversensationalize.
While Alicia ascribes altruistic motives to her donations, the issue of egg donation is not without controversy, and Alicia’s story may serve as a valuable record should the process of egg donation become rarer. Scientific reproductive techniques are under fire in the US from conservative lawmakers, and other moral dilemmas cloud the process, as the US is one of the rare countries where you can “buy” human eggs, and even request certain specific traits such as eye color. The directors refrain from overt editorializing in their filmmaking, preferring to follow Alicia and accurately convey the process, while being a vessel for Alicia’s thoughts and desires, in all their uncertainty.
Filmed as a two-person crew, Oswald behind the camera and Hochheim at the sound, the film is made to grant us access to the intimacy of Alicia’s experience, from creating a life to providing for her own children, but it also grasps this larger context of science, religion, and capitalism. Alicia’s story is quite unique as she, “…sits at an intersection of so many ideas that speak to what it means to be a woman in a capitalist society and although the focus is small, we saw her experience as a microcosm that allowed us to explore all of those ideas”, Hochheim said while discussing the filmmaking process.
Hochheim and Oswald are documentary editors, yet are alums of scripted narrative shorts, and this was their first foray into directing non-fiction. They bring that narrative experience to the approach of this film, and rather than employing a purely observational technique, they do endeavor, at times, to bring forth “Alicia’s subjective experience” via the inclusion of social media posts or an emotionally charged egg extraction scene that shows off the duo’s creativity.
Ahead of its online debut, Cycles made its way around the festival circuit with notable stops at Seattle’s SIFF, New Orleans Film Festival, and New Hampshire Film Festival, where it picked up the Best Documentary Short Award. Hochheim and Oswald are currently working on a feature documentary, Newville, about ten siblings and their relationship to their childhood home. Production has already begun on that project, but they are also developing a feature screenplay, Blind Hog, about a young mother who loses custody of her son and creates a VR alter ego of him to stay close to.