A woman holding a baby is walking through a barren landscape. She could be from one of the war-torn places on Earth in 2024 – 2025: Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Myanmar, DR Congo. Or she could be a victim of climate change, displaced from her home by floods, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires. All we know initially is that she is looking for a place where she and her baby can be safe.
Unprecedented rain storms have created flood conditions in London and parts of England. Food is in short supply and those with water soaked homes are looking elsewhere for shelter. The Woman (Jodie Comer) has just given birth to a baby boy, and she and her husband R (Joel Fry) decide to go to his parents’ farm in the country. But that solution is short-lived when his parents are struck by tragedy.
They move on to a shelter but R is separated from Woman and the baby. It is a noisy and dangerous place, under attack by looters. She joins another mother, O (Katherine Waterston), and her child who are heading to a commune on an island off the coast of Scotland. Woman tries to adapt there but finds the group’s indifference to what is happening elsewhere unsettling. Yearning for her husband, she sets out on her own to go home.
The End We Start From is a poignant survival film directed by Mahalia Balo and written by Alice Birch from the novel of the same title by Megan Hunter. Benedict Cumberbatch, a producer on the film who has a small role as a survivalist, commented on one of the themes:
“It’s such a powerful, polemic piece, as well as being poetic and also mundane at times. It’s so honest and raw about early motherhood. The foreground focus of a mother and child in that first year against this epic backdrop of societal and systemic collapse is a very rich mental canvas to draw from.”
Woman’s journey reveals the transformative power of motherhood and the resilience needed to protect a child in an uncertain world. She has to adapt to both displacement and loss, while finding the courage and the strength to connect with others. Hope also drives her to return to where her husband can find them.
A second theme is more universal, going beyond the experiences of Woman and her baby. They are climate change refugees, like millions of other people around the world today dealing with climate catastrophes. She moves through a devastated landscape as a reminder of how fragile our planet is, how much we depend upon its resources and stability, and how much we have to lose when we do not care for the Earth.