9-Month Contract follows Tbilisi-based Zhana, who has intermittently experienced homelessness since leaving the orphanage she was raised in, and resorts to work as a surrogate to provide for her own teenage daughter, Elene.

While the subject of her pregnancies remains unspoken between her and Elene, Zhana’s financial struggles persist – and she is exposed to shadowy surrogacy agencies who operate with impunity, volatile relationships with the prospective parents whose children she carries,
and constant income insecurity. With no proper regulations in place, she pushes her body to the extreme through multiple childbirths, taking a dangerous toll on her mental and physical health, and eventually risking her life.

Through the director’s decade-long friendship with the pair, the film sensitively explores the evolving dynamics of their mother-daughter relationship, as Elene becomes aware of her mother’s work and the impact it is having on them both. 9-Month Contract bears witness to
the experience and profound fallout of a job which is often made invisible.