Milk: Breastfeeding and the Minefield of Motherhood

Fariba Buchheim’s Milk is a 3-minute docu-drama of a mother and her infant in Nigeria, featuring social actors Nene Aliemeke and baby Chukwuka Aliemeke. The film is an advertisement of the work of Herconomy Bank, a fintech company invested in breastfeeding. 

There is no dialogue but a voiceover narration is used to illustrate the bond between struggling mothers and their infants, who need to be bottle-fed. A post-film title card tells you 34% of mothers’ income is budgeted for baby formula. In the narration, doubts come tentatively to the fore, questions that are also prayers: please let what I am doing be the right thing to do, please let me do no harm to this life I created. 

The cinematography emphasises the dramatic quality of the narrative as well as its specificity—the vulnerability of loving is made prominent; the stigma associated with breastfeeding or not, economic poverty, and being a woman within patriarchal systems; and introspective style—by using a dark colour scheme accentuated by shadows. The voiceover signals its dual nature, both private and declarative; as if confiding in a group of fellow sisters, while the music swells with both tension and intention. 

As in all of advertising, there is a strong sense of empowerment, a confirmed image of the future, a go-getter-ness to its subject. For the sake of those same subjects, you really hope what you see is what you get.