Writer and Director: Bassam Tariq
It sounds like it’s going to be a spoof, a hitman forced to look after his three children, maybe inspired by a 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, but Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother screening at the BFI London Film Festival couldn’t be more different, a film that takes itself and its central character’s dilemma very seriously indeed. Running at 1 hour and 50-minutes, there is quite a lot going on with discussions of grief, religious practice and belief, the nature of parenthood and specifically of the role of a mother in both families and communities, Tariq’s film is largely small and quiet but blows it with an unlikely ending.
A hired assassin Latif likes to kill with a knife but when his wife dies, he’s left with three children to care for including a baby still breastfeeding. In the search for milk for his child, Latif is drawn into a religious criminal conspiracy between rival gangs, testing his Muslim faith as the characters wonder what God’s plan holds for them. Meeting the shady Pastor Hwan, establishing his own cult, the fight comes home to Latif who must protect his family.
Tariq’s film is largely about parenthood and the extremes an individual must go to to protect their family with Latif’s job being almost irrelevant to the feelings and actions he needs to take. Until this point a largely absent father, away a lot on ‘business,’ Latif’s attempts to now be mother and father to his children are interesting, and the extent to which his Muslim community both rally round and try to exploit his need unfold well. The search for mothers’ milk for the baby takes on a symbolic value, a sign of innocence that becomes corrupted by Latif’s profession as it intrudes.
And here, Tariq is less clear about the kind of film he wants to make, which one minute is a social-realist drama and the next a shoot-em-up as Latif gets drawn into a bigger conspiracy by refusing to do a crime boss a favour. How his two worlds collide is potentially interesting, especially when the children are present, but his hitman job and the competing religious groups are not so well defined making it harder to follow the permutations of the plot and what it is everyone seems to have ‘beef’ about – there’s something about Muslim pornographers, disrespect and some gun-toting Christians believing in a cleanse but the whole thing starts to make less sense as it unfolds.
Mahershala Ali is excellent as the conflicted and deeply honourable Latif trying to do the right thing by everyone, although it is less clear how he ended up in such a complex life in the first place. His physical power is clear in the opening scene taking inspiration from the pre-title sequence of Casino Royale from 2005 and the gentleness as he runs around trying to source breast milk is also convincing.
Tarq’s film ends with a bizarre set-to in baddie Pastor Hwan’s (a cartoonish John Cho) mansion that tries to channel divine intervention but is just rather daft, only the rest of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother has been too po-faced to really pull it off. A lesson in parenthood but eventually lacks its own restraint.
You Mother Your Mother Your Mother is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2026 from 7-18 October.
