Dolores

When a traumatized harpist begins to lose her grip on reality, the bond with her six-year-old daughter evolves into a disturbing symbiosis in which they recognize and feed each other’s darkness.

Synopsis

Dolores is a modern interpretation of the classic Greek tragedy Medea. Medea is the princess and sorceress of Colchis who, consumed by revenge, kills her own children after her husband Jason abandons her for a younger princess. In this adaptation, the focus shifts to Medea and her daughter Eriopis, reimagined here as Alma and Dolores.

Following the birth of her daughter, the life of the talented harpist Alma seems to be slowly falling apart. What begins as exhaustion and doubts about motherhood escalates into a struggle between reality and madness. As Alma tries to keep her life as an artist and a mother together, her world becomes increasingly overwhelmed by dark visions.

At the centre of Alma’s universe is her six-year-old daughter Dolores, a seemingly angelic girl with a disturbing fantasy world. Dolores’s drawings, stories and games become increasingly unsettling, and her obsessive love for her mother takes on a possessive undertone. At the same time, Alma is haunted by traumas from her past: a destructive relationship with Dolores’s father and sexually abusive behaviour. A brief encounter with a new man ends in violence and drags Alma even further into the darkness.

From then on, the line blurs between Alma’s psychosis and a possible supernatural evil. Is Dolores merely a child reflecting her mother’s dark emotions? Or is there more to it than that? When Alma’s paranoia reaches its peak, the relationship between mother and daughter escalates into a violent confrontation that will change their lives forever. One question remains:

Who is really the monster here?

Dolores is a gripping psychological horror film about motherhood, identity and the fear that the greatest danger does not come from outside, but from the most intimate bond there is.