DOK.fest München 2025: 9-Month Contract (dir. Ketevan Vashagashvili) | Review
9-Month Contract is a poignant ode to resilience and maternal love, brought to life by the touching bond between Zhana and her daughter, Elene, in front of Ketevan Vashagashvili’s camera.
Barely in her thirties, Zhana works as a surrogate mother. For a few thousand euros, she carries and delivers other people’s babies—often at great risk to her own life. It’s a job that has become an essential lifeline for this young Georgian mother who, not so long ago, was living on the streets with her daughter. 9-Month Contract plunges us into their day-to-day reality, shaped by the fear of losing everything once again, the physical toll of pregnancy, and above all, the unwavering love between a mother and her child. The feature-length documentary had its German premiere at the 2025 edition of DOK.fest München, following its debut at CPH:DOX 2025.
Through Zhana’s story, the film sheds light on the precarious conditions of surrogate mothers in Georgia. Already forced, in most cases, to commodify their ability to give birth, these women are also at the mercy of the agencies that employ them—agencies that show little concern for their health and fail to provide adequate medical care for the risks that come with back-to-back pregnancies. After one of her deliveries, Zhana finds herself facing the wrath of the agency and the intended parents because the medical team had to induce labor earlier than scheduled—to protect both her life and that of the baby.
Director Ketevan Vashagashvili first filmed Zhana and Elene about a decade ago for a short documentary, back when they were homeless. Over the years, a deep bond of trust and respect has grown between the filmmaker and her subjects, and it shows. Behind the camera, Vashagashvili captures their private moments with restraint and empathy, tracing the evolution of their lives and the unshakeable bond between mother and daughter without ever passing judgment on the situations she captures.
Zhana is a portrait of resilience, drawing strength and drive from a singular goal: to offer her daughter a better future. Elene, in turn, understands the choices her mother has made—but Zhana’s dream of a brighter tomorrow becomes so all-consuming that she starts projecting her own vision of success onto her daughter, overlooking the possibility that Elene might have different hopes of her own. In doing so, Zhana inadvertently places her in a difficult bind—torn between wanting to follow her own path and the desire to make her mother proud. 9-Month Contract gently opens up a conversation about the weight of parental expectations in a child’s development and the delicate shaping of self-confidence. In this way, it echoes Valentina and the MUOSters by Francesca Scalisi, one of the standout documentary films of the 2024 festival season.
The 40th edition of DOK.fest München is running on May 7-18, 2025, in Munich, Germany.
