In a few hours it will be midnight. At last, after several failed attempts, now that she is 65, Amalia has succeded to have her dream fulfilled: the whole family has gathered to celebrate Christmas Eve. Una madre (A Mother) tells the story of a dinner, and of the seven attendants who are bound to share the beginning of a new life none of them are envisioning. With her sense of humor and determination, Amalia weaves around the table a net of invisible threads meant to unite and protect her three sons, her daughter in law and her brother. She mends the silences of ones, and channels the present and future of others. She knows, as everyone senses, that this is going to be a long night: full of secrets and lies, plenty of laughter and crossed fire, of confessions made by offspring who are late — though in time —, and words held for too long which will finally explode to enlighten the path that is left to run. She knows this it the time to take action, and she is not willing to let anything get on her way.
A neon sign shooting messages from a terrace next to the harbor; a chair where no one has seated for years; a son who, for Amalia, is life itself; a city of purple skies which conspires to bring back a light that seemed to be long gone… Una madre is not just the portrait of a woman who decided to take the hardest path at a certain time, even though she has been rewarded with the power to guard her children like she never expected she would need to; this is also an intimation of what the human race is capable of proving to itself when its best side comes to surface.