Grains of Sand

Filmed over eight years, Grains of Sand accompanies the filmmaker's mother and mother-in-law, artists and close friends, as they enter their ninth decade. Through conversation, memories and artwork, they explore together the lifelong project of becoming oneself.Margot lives in San Francisco and Barbara in Hamburg. Interviews with the women in their studios and homes reveal their rich lives at the easel and also how they have grappled over the decades with societal expectations in their roles as daughters, wives, mothers, and independent women artists.What does it mean to turn 80? Once a year for the course of the film, the women meet at a stone farmhouse in the countryside. Here they sculpt stones together and explore what it means to arrive at this stage of their lives and how their creativity is changing with the years.Margot and Barbara remain ever-passionate about their art and life. They aren't looking back on their lives. They are living them.