‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ is faith-based filmmaking done right

“Who deserves the best of me?” 

The answer to this Islamic hadith makes up the title of Bassam Tariq’s new film, “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.” The question, and its subsequent answer, opens and closes the film, which stars Mahershala Ali as Latif, a devout hitman who’s left to care for his three young children after the death of his wife. 

The movie lives and dies by this question. In the hadith, a man asks it to the prophet Muhammad three times, receiving the same answer of “your mother” each time. But, considering the questions that Tariq is dealing with in the film – questions about how religion uplifts us and fails us, and about what faith really means – by film’s end, it feels like the answer should be “your children.” 

“Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” represents faith-based filmmaking at its best, and is one of the more complex and thought-provoking ruminations on the subject that you’ll see all year. Perhaps the most poignant dichotomy that Tariq’s film explores is the often-too-wide gulf between what we teach our children and what we actually believe. Ali shines as a man whose place in the world has suddenly shifted, slowly realizing he’s been searching for God in all the wrong places. 

During the film’s opening, the hadith is interspersed with a scene where Latif murders a skinhead in a bathroom stall – a brutal and bloody endeavor at odds with the calm wisdom of the words, setting up the tension that will play out over the course of the rest of the film. After the deed is done, he gets a call: his wife has died, and he needs to come home now. 

What immediately sets “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” apart from other action movies of its ilk – despite the fact that the protagonist is a hitman and there is a dead wife involved – is that it’s not a movie about revenge. It’s about big ideas, about religious struggle both external and internal, about family, about the tension between violence and peace. But, importantly, it’s also about a man just trying to make it through the day, and that desperation permeates every shot of the film (shot beautifully by Katelin Arizmendi). It quickly becomes apparent that before his wife’s death, Latif was never really home. Now, he’s forced to reckon with not only his work, but also the quiet inconveniences of everyday life, like a baby who refuses to drink formula (a big chunk of the film is dedicated to Latif’s quest to find breastmilk), and trying to figure out what his kids are watching on the internet. 

Taking care of his family becomes all the more difficult when he becomes wrapped up in a full-blown religious war. Hwan Yoon (John Cho), a militaristic evangelical preacher, is coming for the greater Muslim community, targeting Hatty (Abubakr Ali), a young influencer whose content mainly consists of porn. Yoon has become convinced that Hatty is sex trafficking young women, and he’s making open threats against Hatty and any who associate with him. Hatty’s uncle, Mike (Laith Nakli), asks Latif to take care of the problem. 

The tension of the violence of Latif’s professional world creates friction with his newfound domesticity, but Tariq isn’t really interested in playing that tension for laughs, which would be an easy lane to walk (a hitman with a baby is, objectively, kind of funny). “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” has a sense of urgency to it that wraps you up so fully in Latif’s plight – you feel inside of it with him rather than like an observer. You feel his inner conflict as clearly as if it were your own.

That conflict crystalizes in an early scene between Latif and his eldest daughter, Fatiha (Adia), when she admits to the father she barely knows that she’s uninterested in the religion that he holds so dear. He tries to argue with her, but it’s difficult to argue against yourself – and the loss of faith Latif feels since the death of his wife is reflected back at him in Fatiha. Adia delivers one of the best teen performances of the year, heartbreaking as a girl disrupted by grief, trying so hard to project apathy to cover up her anger and sadness. 

So Latif is facing battles on two fronts – one with a daughter who can see right through him, who makes him wonder how he can ask his children to have faith when his own feels so twisted inside of him, and one with militant Christians. The movie frames the death of Latif’s wife as the catalyst for his personal struggle, and if I had to nitpick, I’d say this is the one thing in an otherwise intricate film that feels a little simplistic, playing into tired tropes about the virtues of women (particularly, women who have died). But to its credit, while “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” frames the loss as the catalyst for Latif’s internal struggle with his faith, it also forces him to question what, exactly, he was putting his fatih in before. 

Throughout the film, Tariq shows us both distortions and pure examples of religious communities – from Yoon and his militants to Latif’s own mosque, where their leader (played by Giancarlo Esposito) is always available to lend an ear, or to kick a soccer ball around with the kids. These represent two extremes of where a person might find God – down the barrel of a gun, or surrounded by community. Latif has spent his life bound by one (he doesn’t use a gun, but the point stands), but now must accept that maybe, he’s been bound by the wrong thing.

The end of “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” is a big swing, one that might baffle some with its sense of unreality, or frustrate others with its abrupt change of tone (it’s also the part of the movie that makes it clear that Ali and Tariq were planning to make a “Blade” movie together once upon a time). But I love how it rips the rug out from under you, allowing its protagonist an almost magical moment of change, of rebirth – a literal representation of Latif’s acceptance. Maybe, God was not in the killing, not in the violence. Maybe, God was at home the whole time.