MOTHER TERESA & ME Actress Moved to Serve After Shocking Discovery

Published: October 4, 2023

MOTHER TERESA & ME Actress Moved to Serve After Shocking Discovery

By Cooper Dowd, Movieguide®

In an effort to broaden her knowledge of the entertainment industry, actress and producer Jacqueline Fritschi-Cornaz took a trip to India to research Bollywood.

While there, Fritschi-Cornaz realized that she felt called to follow in Mother Teresa’s footsteps and serve the people of India.

In her all-new movie, MOTHER TERESA & ME, Fritschi-Cornaz outlines Mother Teresa’s story of courage and sacrifice and her lasting influence on the people of India today.

“Well, 14 years ago, I visited India for the first time,” Fritschi-Cornaz told Movieguide®. “As an actress, I was interested in getting to know this Bollywood film industry. So I was on my way in a little taxi in the crowd, and for the first time in my life, I was just so moved and shocked to realize their lack of opportunities. I instantly decided that I absolutely had to do something.”

“I entered a film studio, and there was this huge painting of Mother Teresa, and spontaneously, I asked the producer, ‘Have you ever thought of making a film about this incredible woman who had the strength and the power and the courage to get up every morning and face that misery and do something?’ That was so inspiring to me. And as this producer couldn’t find money in Bollywood to produce this movie, written by my husband and myself, we established the Zariya Foundation.”

Through their foundation, Fritschi-Cornaz raised money to cover the movie’s production. Now, the revenue from the movie will be used to support children in India.

A portion of Movieguide®’s review reads:

MOTHER TERESA & ME is a powerful faith-based drama. It mixes the story of famed missionary Mother Teresa and her struggles to help the poor and dying in Calcutta India amid incredibly hard circumstances decades ago, with the story of a young Indian woman who struggles with what to do when she becomes pregnant, and the child’s father abandons her.

Fritschi-Cornaz, who plays Mother Teresa in the movie, said that it was important to show an authentic portrayal of the iconic figure.

“We start in India, where Mother Teresa built up her work, and then hopefully, you know, we can expand all over the world,” she said of her ministry. “We really wanted to show Mother Teresa as the human being behind the saint, as the woman behind the saint, to inspire audiences around the world, to really have their own or create their own visions and dreams and to stick with them even in times of troubles and doubts, as Mother Teresa did.”

“Hopefully, we are able to also motivate a lot of people to live with more respect, tolerance and compassion and loving action as Mother Teresa called it,” she added.

She continued: “I learned through this long, long journey that we are able to do so much more than we believe. And that we can trust that if our dream is big enough, and if we can find people, we can motivate and involve ourselves in the whole process, that it’s worth it to stay with the vision and to keep on going.”

MOTHER TERESA & ME is set to release as a Fathom Event on Oct. 5, 2023.