Childless Couple Asks Themselves ‘Why the F*** Am I So Sad?’

After 14 years together, editor Nela Märki and cinematographer-producer Martin Rattini locate a kernel of sadness in a shared life they describe as happy: they have not been able to have children. Grief and love inform the couple’s first feature—they share directors’ credits—with the title “Why the F*** Am I So Sad?,” which documents their changing relationship to childlessness.

Their documentary project was pitched earlier this week at Thessaloniki’s Pitching Forum and has since received the Mediterranean Film Institute Doc Award, which consists of free participation in the 2024 edition of the MFI Doc Lab, a script development program dedicated to documentaries. Films that Märki has edited have screened at Locarno, CPH:DOX and IDFA, but “Why the F*** Am I So Sad?” will be a debut feature for both of them as directors. Rattini, who is also a cinematographer, produces with Italy’s Helios Sustainable Films.

Speaking with Variety, Märki says she’d noticed nuanced depictions of childless couples were lacking in cinema, while the existent ones were mostly negatively tinted, particularly the women. Then, she understood the best way forward was to make a film about her and Martin’s story, and to do it together. “We thought, ‘We’re filmmakers, let’s document this!’,” says Rattini regarding the way the couple dealt with an ongoing cycle of IVF treatments, procedures invasive to the female body often billed as “an easy fix…