You Are Not My Mother

Samhain (the Irish Halloween) is approaching, ushering in the dark half of the year and lifting the veil on the spirit world. Char (Hazel Doupe) is an intelligent and resourceful teenager, but she’s bullied at school and stressed at home, where she lives on a council estate with her strict and superstitious grandmother (Ingrid Craigie) and her depressed, bedridden mother, Angela (Carolyn Bracken, also in Oddity). When the family spirals into crisis Char is inducted into more than one traumatic truth, but she has to decide if it’s her gran who is crazy, or if her mother has been invaded by evil spirits…

One of the best horror films of recent years, from anywhere, Kate Dolan’s film finds a chilling angle on mother-daughter relationships. All three leads give spectacular performances rooted in social realism but tapping into madness.

Unnerving, insidious and uncannily ambiguous.

Anton Bitel, Little White Lies

Deeply creepy and strangely moving…

Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times

A skin-crawling merger of Irish folklore and family secrets. Imaginative and spooky, You Are Not My Mother shows just how frightening — and stigmatizing — a parent’s mental illness can be to a child.

Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times

Supported by