Mo Papa

Abandonment is the primordial condition of the human being, an anguish that leads us back to the radical solitude of existence.
—Jean-Paul Sartre

The name Eugen derives from the Greek εὐγενής (eugenēs), which literally means “of noble origin” or “well-born.” This etymological root introduces a deeply ironic and tragic counterpoint to the protagonist’s story: Eugen is marked by absence, by a fractured origin, by a sense of abandonment that seems to deny him the possibility of fully inhabiting the nobility implicit in his name. His journey thus becomes a quest for existential legitimacy, for a form of recognition that is not only social but ontological—a longing for rebirth that reflects the tension between what his name promises and what life has taken from him. This dissonance between the meaning of the name and the lived reality amplifies the symbolic dimension of the film, turning Eugen into a modern archetype of the human being who struggles to reclaim inner dignity despite broken roots.

While Eugen yearns for reconciliation, his unhealed wounds push him into a painful vortex of self-harm. His hopes for forgiveness founder in the shadows of guilt; his desire for love collides with the hatred he feels toward himself. Mo Papaexplores this devastating cycle of trauma, where love takes the shape of inner revenge and forgiveness is obstructed by a burden of responsibility that seems not to belong to him alone.

Director Eeva Mägi explains that the film was created without a traditional script: it is not written, but “felt, breathed, lived.” The film draws inspiration from authentic voices, from real experiences, including Mägi’s work in a psychiatric clinic, and unfolds in an organic, almost documentary-like form.

Mo Papa is a work that pulses with the urgency of a fractured existence—a filmic account in which existential discomfort emerges as an indelible inheritance. Eugen is not just a man who has lived through a tragedy: he is the very embodiment of what it means to grow up in a void, in the absence of emotional roots, carrying the weight of abandonment as an existential wound that cannot heal.

The film dismantles ordinary narrative mechanisms to deliver an experience that seems to cut through the flesh. The decision to forego a written script is crucial: the characters arise from real encounters, from life stories that are not mere inspiration but the very structure of the film. This approach gives the work immense power: the dialogue is not acted but confessed, and every gesture appears at once fragile and inevitable.

Eugen, newly free, moves like a shattered soul: before him stands the father who abandoned him, a symbol of a love that never managed to become one, and the two childhood friends who represent the only points of contact with who he once was. Yet those contact points, however precious, are not enough to mend his identity. The pain he carries is not only for his brother’s death, but for a missing origin, for a parenthood denied. This primordial trauma fuels a vicious cycle: Eugen longs for forgiveness, but forgiveness seems an unattainable luxury, because his guilt is not only for what he has done but for what he never received.

The film reveals a tragic existential truth: those abandoned as children do not carry only memories, but an inheritance that manifests as an involuntary script, an invisible map tracing paths toward self-destruction. In this geography of the soul, love becomes confused with rejection, and tenderness turns into a reflection of resentment.

Mägi directs with an almost liturgical gaze, as if performing a painful rite of confession. The images are simple yet dense: there is no need for baroque aesthetics when the emotional weight alone fills the screen. Sound, music, editing—all contribute to conveying the sensation of a soul desperately seeking a way out but becoming lost in its own thoughts.

In this sense, Mo Papa is not an investigation into the inheritance of trauma, into how childhood wounds become part of our very structure. It is the artistic expression of a continuous discomfort, a narrative ritual of guilt, abandonment, and searching—an urgent reminder that trauma is indelible.

How cold it is in the hell of the abandoned.
—Fabrizio Caramagna