Mother Creature
Maria Tórgarð / Sweden / 2026 / World Premiere / 29 min
A daughter attempts to pull the monster of her childhood out from under the bed in an original, deeply personal and creative film about her mother's mental illness.
At school, a nine-year-old girl raises her hand and tells her classmates that her mother is mentally ill. Thus begins a play written by the daughter herself. The play is her attempt to come to terms with the catatonic schizophrenia that has plagued her mother throughout her life, rather than hiding it away in silence and darkness.
The mother herself has both drawn and written about her schizophrenia, attempting to turn it into a real, tired, exhausted, frustrated mother figure in order to make the people around her understand. And in ‘Mother Creature’, that mother figure is brought to life. In a creative mix of theatre, home video, staging, Faroese nature and classic observation, the filmmaker and daughter attempt to crawl under the bed and look the monster of childhood deep in the eyes. From the co-director of the Faroese CPH:DOX hit ‘Skál’ (2021).