Noomi Rapace talked about her role as Mother Teresa in Teona Strugar Mitevska’s first English film Mother. At the ongoing Sarajevo Film Festival as a jury member, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo star stated that she was interested in Teresa's portrayal as an ordinary woman as she was not keen on doing a traditional biopic. Referring to Teresa, Rapace said, “She was no saint. She’s a quite complex character.”

North Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska’s film follows a week during an important moment in Teresa's life, when she chooses to leave Calcutta’s Loreto Entally convent and start the Order of the Missionaries of Charity.

“She’s waiting for permission from the Vatican to go out on her calling, her mission, to leave the convent and start her mission outside. No one has done what she’s asking permission to do. It hasn’t been done before. She’s a woman in a man’s world,” said Rapace.

The actor, who went away from her home in Sweden as a teenager, stated that she found Teresa’s story relatable as the latter also did the same in her teenage years.

“I’ve felt like I’m against all odds many times and finding my voice and myself in different foreign situations,” Rapace stated. “So I think I can relate to her stubbornness and her conviction that she needed to do this, even if it was going to be painful.”

Describing Mother as a 'non-biopic' in a conversation with Variety, director Mitevska said that the film tells the story of Teresa “before she becomes the Mother Teresa we know today.”

In addition, the filmmaker said, “We wanted to demystify the personage behind the myth and simply speak of this highly intelligent, ambitious woman with a great heart, who was just as flawed as we all are.”