Dr. Anna Viola Sborgi – Mon 9th Feb @1pm – Women, Resilience, and the Labour of Homemaking in 'Rosie' and 'Herself'

Part of a broader project on the representation of women’s experience of the global housing crisis, this talk focuses on two Irish narrative films, Rosie (Paddy Breathnach, 2018) and Herself (Phyllida Lloyd, 2020), portraying the often “invisible” configuration of female houselessness, and the ways in which the process of homemaking is crucially sustained by the two main characters’ resilience and labour.

Sandra (Clare Dunne) and Rosie (Sarah Greene) live in hotel emergency accommodation with their children after unexpectedly losing their homes. I complicate the films’ representation of the two women’s unabating resilience by situating it within scholarship on feminism and resilience (Mc Robbie 2020). While the main characters rely on informal care networks, partly replacing the inadequacy of welfare provision, the emphasis is placed on individual resilience—as opposed to resistance. I demonstrate how women-centred narrative cinema makes it visible for a broad audience. I focus on how resilience is conveyed through the film aesthetics, characterised by a heightened aural and sensory quality that draws viewers in, making them participate in their relentless and embodied labour of “homemaking”.

Dr Anna Viola Sborgi is Research Fellow at The University of Leeds. She previously completed a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellowship:  MEDIAHOMES: Housing Precarity on Screen in Ireland, Portugal and the UK from the 2008 crisis to COVID-19 at University College Cork. Recent essays include: “Millennial Global Starchitecture in the London Square Mile and its Cinematic ‘Other’ in Rocks.” In Cinematic Starchitecture (Routledge, 2025), “Precarious Homes in Britain and France: Dance, Girlhood, and Escape in Fish Tank and Divines.” in Home Screens (Bloomsbury, 2023) She is editorial board member. She is currently writing her first monograph Screening East London: Gentrification in Film and Television (Bloomsbury-BFI, 2026).

FILM AND SCREEN MEDIA AUDITORIUM, KANE BUILDING B10B (BASEMENT)