Mother
1h 22m
Dir. Kristof Bilsen - 82min - 2019 - Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands
In a small village in Thailand, Pomm takes care of Europeans with Alzheimer’s. Helping the residents during the final stages of their life, she has sacrificed being close to her children in order to earn a better living. Meanwhile in Switzerland, a family prepares to say goodbye to their other; a woman who has developed Alzheimer’s in her 50s.
Through extraordinary coincidence, these two narratives collide, challenging society’s preconceptions about the powerful relationship between patients and caregivers: both are trying to recover the pieces of their lives that are gone.
★★★★★ "Kristof Bilsen’s film is a radical achievement: a love letter to loss, sacrifice and yearning” The Guardian http://ow.ly/LwBE50DZZs0
Introduction by executive producer Kirsten Johnson:
"MOTHER is a brilliantly sensitive film which interweaves the impossible choices that two families must make when economic necessities meet the scourge of dementia.
Asking us to look at both the intimate challenges as well as the global ones, MOTHER gently follows Pomm, the young mother who works at a home for foreign patients with dementia in Thailand as her story intersects with an anguished Swiss family, whose mother suffers from early onset dementia and they decide to send her to Thailand for care.
The film opens ways of thinking about what a mother’s role is, questions what we owe our children and our mothers, and most profoundly, asks
how we can face life’s most painful conundrums with dignity.
Filmed in an exquisitely attentive observational approach, MOTHER’s exceptional cinematography reveals the devastatingly trickster ways in which dementia transforms a person and emotionally impacts those who care for such people.
A film full of unforgettable portraits of those who are navigating the most profound challenges, MOTHER is a haunting and gorgeous meditation."