Catalina Villar: Mental health and repressive public morality
Through showing the impact of the use of lobotomy on her grandmother, her film also deals with the social power of doctors, which they usually deny, claiming that their diagnoses are ‘objective’. The moral discourse on ‘normality’ always influences psychiatric categories.
What is really shocking is that 85% of lobotomies were carried out on women, according to statistics from France, Belgium and Switzerland. It was Walter Freeman in the US, where the issues are still relevant today, who propagated its use globally. Egas Moniz won the 1949 Nobel Prize for his investigations that led to the use of lobotomy, and the hospital where he worked still carries his name. Many people have called for the cancellation of his prize but this is not legally possible.
Catalina says: “At the time when the lobotomy was carried out on my grandmother, there was no informed consent, the doctor made his decision without requesting permission, especially in the case of women, rather like today we decide the treatment of children who are ‘not well’. My work is documentary.
This new film has been well-received, especially in Colombia, as it is a French-Colombian co-production, and the story happened in Bogotá. But it has also been shown in Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador and Chile, and of course in France. It is also available on the platform Retina Latina, and will be shown on the French documentary channel Tënk.
She is presently working on a new project on epilepsy, an illness that is still stigmatized, with the intention of showing the different perceptions of the illness by the patient (often a child), their parents, and the doctors.
I spoke to Catalina for The Prisma after the showing of her film “Ana Rosa” at the Casa da America Latina in Lisbon.
The full interview with a trailer and film stills can be read where it has just been published in The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper:
https://theprisma.co.uk/2025/05/12/catalina-villar-mental-health-and-repressive-public-morality/