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Mothers, Mothers, Mothers

CathayPlay 8 films

Throughout our lives, we encounter many different “mothers.”

She may be the person who gave birth to us, the one who holds the family together, or a woman who does not know how to express love. She may also be someone pushed into the depths of life by marriage, childbirth, education, aging, and death. She is expected to be strong, asked to sacrifice, praised as great, yet rarely allowed to simply be herself.

This programme does not attempt to offer a single image of motherhood. Here, we meet mothers who cannot fully understand their daughters but still try to come closer; mothers who compromise again and again within childbirth and family responsibilities; mothers whose love becomes control, and who later reflect from within pain; and daughters who, as their grandmothers grow old, gradually begin to take on the weight of care.

The “mothers” in these films are not symbols to be celebrated on a holiday, but specific, living individuals. They love, and they grow tired. They protect, and they may also hurt. They remain silent, and sometimes, at a belated moment, they are finally seen again.

This Mother’s Day, CathayPlay invites you to watch eight films about mothers. Not to answer the question of “what is a mother,” but to move closer to the women whose lives are often hidden behind the name of motherhood.

Films in This Program

My Dear Dear Home

My Dear Dear Home

YUE Ran | 2026 | 20 min | Non-Fiction, LGBTQ+, Female Director

After settling in Switzerland, director YUE returns home with her same-sex partner to document her interactions with her mother on camera. Unable to understand her daughter’s sexual orientation, her mother tries to find a reason. After an unexpected incident, the once distant mother and daughter begin to speak honestly to each other.
Recommendation
A film about a daughter returning to face her mother. It does not treat the mother-daughter relationship as simple reconciliation, but presents the hardest part of intimacy: we clearly love each other, yet do not truly know one another.

Come Back To Me

Tan Shihan | 2024 | 8 min | Fiction, Female Director | Available July 3

Hong, living in New York, learns that her mother far away in China has passed away. The next day, her daughter’s unusual behavior seems to bring her back to the old house in Jiangxi that’s about to be demolished, and a sealed memory of mother and daughter unfolds.
Recommendation
After a mother leaves, memory becomes even closer. Through images of the old house, a daughter, and a grandmother, the film tells of the bonds between mother and daughter that do not disappear with distance, death, or migration.
Blessed with Burdens

Blessed with Burdens

Chen Ziyan | 34 min | Non-Fiction, Anthropological Film, Female Director

When family members say “having a daughter is blessed,” the film asks: is childbirth really a blessing? Behind the blessings and festivity, how many choices have mothers shouldered and compromised?
Recommendation
This film responds directly to “becoming a mother.” Starting from the experience of childbirth, it observes the different bodily memories, mother-daughter relationships, and family expectations across four generations of women — one of the most suitable flagship works for Mother’s Day in this list.
Polyphony

Polyphony

Li Longjianhui | 2023 | 21 min | Fiction

Fang Nan, unable to find work after graduating from university, runs a clothing stall in Guangzhou with her mother Chen Meiling. In this single-parent household, a mother-daughter relationship constrained by an employer-employee dynamic gradually erupts in daily life.
Recommendation
When mother and daughter are both family and something like employer and employee, love becomes a tension that’s hard to unravel. Polyphony places control, avoidance, dependence, and distance between mother and daughter under one roof, showing the most subtle and painful cracks in intimate relationships.
Rooster the Golden Comb

Rooster the Golden Comb

Yu Hongmiao | 2023 | 85 min | Non-Fiction, Female Director

A mother who lost her eldest daughter to suicide was long trapped in pain and questions. Years later, she raises another daughter, only to face a tense and complex parent-child relationship again. The film explores family education, adolescent mental health, and a mother’s reflection.
Recommendation
This film brings Mother’s Day into sharper reality: maternal love is not always gentle — it can also come with anxiety, expectation, control, and misunderstanding. What’s precious is that the film does not judge the mother, but lets us see how a mother learns to be a mother again within grief.
certain tenderness

certain tenderness

Huang Siyi | 2025 | 15 min | Experimental

The director asks her mother to imitate Hakka, a language unfamiliar to her, to teach what elements a home should have. Out-of-focus, flickering images gradually sharpen as mother and daughter attempt to build and present their “home” within the frame.
Recommendation
A formally lighter work with finely tuned emotion. Rather than narrating mother-daughter conflict directly, it uses language, image, and the act of “building a home” to show how a long-absent shared life between mother and daughter is practiced anew.
The Cloud Is Still There

The Cloud Is Still There

Li Lok Yee | 2020 | 18 min | Malaysia | Fiction, Female Director

As bedridden grandfather approaches the end of life, Xiaole and her mother clash over different beliefs. Facing death, filial piety, and religion, they express love in different ways while maintaining their bond through silence and argument.
Recommendation
Best placed in the latter half of the list, this film situates “mother” within a larger family structure. It is not simple mother-daughter opposition, but how mother and daughter each use their own convictions to protect the same loved one when death arrives at home.
Goodbye Grandma,Goodbye

Goodbye Grandma,Goodbye

Wei Yicheng | 38 min | Non-Fiction

After grandmother falls, the calm family life is disrupted. Family members discuss repeatedly at the hospital and at home how to care for her, eventually deciding to send her to a nursing home. After the incident subsides, life seems to return to its original track.
Recommendation
As the list’s closing work, this film places “mother” within care and aging. The mother is no longer just someone to be observed, but the one who must make decisions, bear pressure, and keep the family running. It moves Mother’s Day from love and gratitude toward more realistic responsibility and farewell.