A Mother Apart

A Mother Apart 💖💔❤️‍🩹💝, dir. Laurie Townshend, 2024, Canada, 89 min.
Thursday, June 26, 2025, 3:30 pm, Roxie Theater
and available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 to 30, 2025

A Mother Apart

Staceyann Chin, an acclaimed spoken word artist, queer activist, and many other kinds of activist, went on a trek from city to city and ultimately across the seas, to find and reach out to her birth mother, who abandoned her in Jamaica when she was only 9 years old. Her grandmother brought her up the best she could, but decades later, the emotional wounds linger, along with the gnawing question Why would a mother leave her child?

It’s not often a documentary leaves me completely speechless. A Mother Apart is an emotionally turbulent ride, confronting forthrightly the ripple effect of that decision and of the decisions she made with a younger sister Staceyann didn’t know existed. Then throw into the mix Staceyann’s prodigy of a daughter, making online protest videos when she was three years old, but clearly about issues she understood and agreed with. One example: Adults, don’t pick up a child without that child’s full permission, and “oh, okay, I guess” is not full permission.

Staceyann’s coming to terms with the pressures that drove her mother to make that gut-wrenching decision, and even coming to a bit of empathy (with admittedly strongly mixed emotions) for her. The dynamics between Staceyann and her half-sister, between her and her mother, between her and her own daughter, and finally between her daughter and her mother, and the activist passion of Staceyann’s spoken word pieces, carry the film through in a “lose track of time” emotional immersion from which you the viewer may follow any number of branches.

This film is not only a must see, it is a must feel.

• IMDb • trailer • official website: AMotherApartFilm.com •