Future Baby

FUTURE BABY sheds light on the complex field of medicalised birth control from different perspectives. Maria Arlamovsky visits doctors, scientists and technicians in clinics and sterile laboratories around the world, accompanying couples who wish to have children, egg donors and surrogate mothers to examinations and interventions. The documentary film conjures up a worrying scenario: examinations, tests, interventions, corrections. What originally began as a way to fulfil the desire of infertile couples to have children, but also to select embryos based on certain genetic dispositions, has developed into a lucrative economic sector. As such, it not only fulfils the need for ‘risk prevention’, but also gives the child, a ‘product of love’, the character of a commodity. The dream baby from the factory: biological clocks are turned back, human ‘incubators’ are purchased, bodies are specifically ‘improved’, undesirable characteristics are sorted out. Control phantasms that touch on different discourses, redefine femininity and parenthood - but above all raise the urgent question of what happens to our ideas of a viable, ‘healthy’ body. (from: www.futurebaby.at)