Mileva

Ksenija Martinovic

An actress looks through newspapers and books and searches the web, piece by piece, collecting fragments of a story that has long been unspoken. A biography reconstructed like a puzzle that is missing many pieces. Yet another biography of a female scientist whose intelligence and discoveries have been overshadowed, almost hidden, in favour of a male colleague. But what are we to think when the scientist in question is Albert Einstein, the most brilliant mind of the twentieth century, and the female scientist is Mileva Mari?, his first wife but also the first woman admitted to the Physics course at the Zurich Polytechnic? Space, time and gravity become metaphors for love and the shadows it casts.

“Differently to Einstein's official biographies, where she appears as a pale shadow beside her husband, various sources reveal that Mileva Mari? clearly played a part in her partner's extraordinary creative progress. However, her reserved nature and her premature abandoning of her commitment to science mean that her theoretical contribution is still questioned today.
Mileva Mari?'s biography reminds us of all those women who have been overshadowed as a result of blatant gender discrimination. These great women include Rosalind Franklin, Lise Meitner and Jocelyn Bell. Recently this phenomenon has been called the Matilda Effect, and it can be clearly seen in the field of science".
Ksenija Martinovic

Running time: 70 minutes