Newborn

After her son’s birth, journalist Clémentine Goldszal was struck by the fact that despite an abundance of books about motherhood, there was an incredible scarcity of literature on what a newborn child experiences. She searched in books, art, philosophy; she observed her own son. But the breakthrough came when Clémentine decided to make herself a ‘fly on the wall’ in the neonatal ICU of the Necker Children’s Hospital in Paris for six months. At the bedside of some of the world’s tiniest, freshest beings, she seeks to understand the hidden experience of newborns, our dramatic passage into the world and how much this time remains within us all. Documenting the deeply vulnerable babies brought in for treatment, and the heroic flow of caregivers attending to their needs, ‘Newborn’ brings to life the beautiful fragility of our first days, giving a voice to those who cannot speak.