With her boyfriend arrested for drug dealing, Carla, 8 month pregnant, spends her days at the jail door. As the days go by, an unlikely relationship eventually emerges, putting everything in question.

Director's Biography:

Cátia Biscaia (1983, Leiria, Portugal) has a post-graduate degree in Audiovisual and Multimedia from the Lisbon School of Media. Professional photographer - awarded nationally and internationally - and university lecturer in the field of Image, she also works in the area of Cinema, as Director of Leiria Film Fest (International Short Film Festival), producer and image assistant for award-winning films such as: «Hushed. Left. Jumped», «Fled. Lay. Fell», «Manuel» (directed by Bruno Carnide), among others. «Her name is Carla» is her first work as a director.

Director's Statement:

The fictional story of «Her name is Carla» happens to happen on a car trip while passing the door of a prison where I see a girl clinging to bars outside, on a day that is not a visiting day.

The desire to carry out a project of this type is something that I have been maturing for several years.

This first work, for me, comes late, but if it were not, I might not have achieved this level of maturity. At 37 years old and after going through several different professional positions, and different life experiences, I decide to embark on a challenge - which is not completely new, because I have been working in the cinema area since 2013 - but, in a certain way, since is the first film directed by me.

There would be assumptions that he would have to fulfill: there would have to have a strong woman at the center of the story (for reasons of sorority) and there would have to be an allusion to motherhood (because I was a mother myself not long ago).

During my own pregnancy, at 6 months old, I was admitted with a threat of premature birth that put me to bed for 2 months. The feelings provoked by that experience, added to the contact with several mothers in the maternity who lost their children in the most diverse ways, made me create an empathy for all the women who carried their babies during that time and who did not have same luck as me, who today have my daughter in my arms.

In these minutes, I try to show: a little of what a woman is capable of doing and facing in order to achieve her goals; and a little bit of the woman who carries a child in her womb and its challenges, especially when she is notoriously lacking in paternal support. Everything seen through the eyes of a man.

Carla's story is, therefore, an ode to the female universe, and to all mothers who suffer from pregnancy loss at a late stage of pregnancy.