WATCH TRAILER

A Mother Apart

A film by Laurie Townshend

Canada | 2024 | 88 minutes | English, German

How do you raise a child when your own mother abandoned you? In a remarkable story of healing and forgiveness, Jamaican-American poet and LGBTQ+ activist Staceyann Chin radically re-imagines the essential art of mothering.

Host a screening

SYNOPSIS

A MOTHER APART follows acclaimed poet, performer, and activist Staceyann Chin (Def Poetry Slam, MotherStruck!) on a deeply personal search for her biological mother, who abandoned her as a child in Jamaica. Now a mother herself, Staceyann wrestles with the question: how do you raise a daughter when your own mother left you behind? Spanning Brooklyn, Montreal, Cologne, and Jamaica, her journey blends raw honesty, archival imagery, and vivid animation to trace decades of longing, pain, and resilience. As she seeks connection with the mother who didn’t raise her, Staceyann grapples with the legacy of abandonment and the radical possibility of forgiveness. Alongside her daughter Zuri, she reimagines what family, home, and healing can look like.



At once intimate and universal, A MOTHER APART is a profound story of resilience, reconciliation, and the courage to break cycles of neglect, as well as how to approach forgiveness and intergenerational healing with radical honesty and deep compassion. A vital work for conversations on LGBTQ+ identity, Black motherhood, and the transformative power of love and forgiveness, the film invites audiences to reflect on what it truly means to mother and to be mothered.

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

  • Nominee, Allan King Award for Excellence in Documentary, 2025 DGC Awards
  • Best Feature Documentary, 2024 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival
  • Best Canadian Feature, 2024 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival
  • Audience Award for Best Documentary, 2024 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival
  • Hot Docs International Film Festival
  • Doc NYC
  • Frameline Film Festival
  • Blackstar Film Festival
  • Cleveland International Film Festival
  • Inside Out Film Festival
  • Toronto Pan African Film Festival
  • Vancouver Queer Film Festival
  • Reel Q Pittsburgh LGBTQ+ Film Festival
  • March on Washington Film Festival
  • St. John's International Women's Film Festival
  • IMAGE+NATION LGBTQ Film Festival
  • Cinema on the Bayou
  • BFI Flare (European Premiere)
  • Women+Film Festival
  • Womxn of Color Weekend
  • Queer Voices: NYC Film Festival
  • 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Laurie Townshend

Laurie Townshend is a Toronto-based filmmaker, writer and educator. Raised by a Jamaican mother—the family’s eloquent griot—Laurie learned early on that before we shape stories, stories shape us. Her films centre on the human capacity to transform small acts of courage into quiet revolutions, as seen in the dramatic short The Railpath Hero (2013, TIFF Black Star Festival, starring Stephan James), the unscripted series Human Frequency Streetdocs (2014) and the award-winning short doc Charley (2016). A Mother Apart is Laurie’s first feature-length film. (10/7)

Credits: Director: Laurie Townshend Producers: Ngardy Conteh George, Alison Duke, Justine Pimlott Executive Producers Chanda Chevannes Alison Duke Ngardy Conteh George Anita Lee Written by Laurie Townshend Alison Duke Edited by Sonia Godding Togobo Directors of Photography Mrinal Desai Ashley Iris Gill Gabriela Osio Vanden Motion Designer Ramón Charles Music Composed by Tom Third Vocals by SATE Co Executive Producer Staceyann Chin Associate Producer Elise Whittington Development Producer Lea Marin Production Managers Nina Beveridge Fonna Seidu Story Editor Ricardo Acosta Additional Writing Lindsey Addawoo Script Consultant Sugith Varughese Research and Clearances Amy Fritz Clearances Coordinator Lucas Silveira Additional Photography Maya Bankovic Amber Fares Ania Freer Kristin Kremers Iris Ng Laurie Townshend Mark Valino Set Photography Ina Sotirova Sound Recordists Alisa Erlikh Stéphan Guschewski Tobias Haynes Sam Kashefi Sara Labadie Sheldon Turnbull Additional Sound Jada Biggs Antoinette Tomlinson Kenzie Yango Production Coordinator Naiyelli Romero Agüero Assistant Production Coordinator Folasewa Babalola Production Assistants Jada Biggs Keesha Chung Alison Dykstra Stephanie Hanson Kayla Keip Karen Osagie Transport Prince Ellis Richard Wint Additional Research Folasewa Babalola Post Production Supervisor Omar Abd Alla Assistant Editors Meeka McLean Denise Lee Hutchinson Ri-Ann Pully Nathan Allen Abasi Ekpenyon Sound Mixer Riana Gautama Wibowo Re-recording Mixer Stacy Coutts DX Editor Kathy Choi SFX Editor Drew Snyder Mix Assistant Cait Macintosh Audio Coordinator Nova Oh Transcriptions Closed Caption Services German – English Translations Zun Lee Accounting Services Kudlow Ye Professional Corporation Ability Accounting Legal Henderson & Co Cheryl Grossman Entertainment Law Insurance Arthur J. Gallagher Canada Limited For The NFB Studio Operations Manager Mark Wilson Studio Administrator Andrew Martin-Smith Senior Production Coordinators Melissa Paduada Katie Murray Production Supervisor Marcus Matyas Technical Coordinator Kevin Riley Studio Technician Q’Mal Labad-Workman Studio Coordinator Calvin Serutoke Marketing Manager Andrea Elalouf Marketing Coordinator Harmonie Hemming Publicist Jennifer Mair Legal Counsel Peter Kallianiotis 


Quotes:

"A remarkably matrilineal piece, speaking about pain and forgiveness, about being victimized without becoming a victim." - Rebecca M. Alvin, Provincetown Magazine 


“A Mother Apart is about a kind of forgiveness, albeit a messy, sad one. But even more, it’s about finding a voice.” - Janet Smith, Stir Arts & Culture 


"This extraordinary portrait of a woman haunted and scarred by abandonment turns into a tale of real strength and joy."  - Susan G. Cole, POV Magazine at Hot Docs 2024  


“A courageous exploration of abandonment, identity, and the enduring pull of family.” - Frameline 


“Laurie Townshend has brilliantly constructed an exploration of Chin's intentional parenting” - Elisabetta Bianchini, Yahoo News 


“Chin retraces her mother’s steps in documentary A Mother Apart to better understand who her mother was while reflecting on what kind of a mother she wants to be to her own child in this deeply personal journey of motherhood.” - Andrew Murray, The Upcoming 

YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN

The Revival: Women and the Word

THE REVIVAL: WOMEN AND THE WORD chronicles the US tour of a group of Black lesbian poets and musicians, who become present-day stewards of a historical movement to build community among queer women of color. Their journey to strengthen their community is enriched by insightful interviews with leading Black feminist thinkers and historians, including Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Nikki Finney, and Alexis Deveaux. As the group tours the country, the film reveals their aspirations and triumphs, as well as the unique identity challenges they face encompassing gender, race, and sexuality. This is a rarely seen look into a special sisterhood - one where marginalized voices are both heard and respected.
Learn more

Halving the Bones

Skeletons in the closet? HALVING THE BONES delivers a surprising twist to this tale. This cleverly-constructed film tells the story of Ruth, a half-Japanese filmmaker living in New York, who has inherited a can of bones that she keeps on a shelf in her closet. The bones are half of the remains of her dead Japanese grandmother, which she is supposed to deliver to her estranged mother. A narrative and visual web of family stories, home movies and documentary footage, HALVING THE BONES provides a spirited exploration of the meaning of family, history and memory, cultural identity and what it means to have been named after Babe Ruth!
Learn more

My Name Is Andrea

A hybrid feature documentary about controversial feminist writer and public intellectual Andrea Dworkin, who offered a revolutionary analysis of male supremacy with iconoclastic flair. Decades before #MeToo, Dworkin called out the pervasiveness of sexism and rape culture, and the ways it impacts every woman’s daily life.
Learn more

Daughter of a Lost Bird

Kendra Mylnechuk Potter, a Native woman adopted into a white family, reconnects with her Native identity and begins to view herself as a living legacy of U.S. assimilationist policy.
Learn more

What My Mother Told Me

Exquisitely beautiful and profoundly moving, WHAT MY MOTHER TOLD ME is a dramatic journey towards self discovery. The story focuses on Jesse, a young woman from England, who goes to Trinidad to bury her father. Reluctantly she agrees to meet her mother, whom she thought had abandoned her when she was a child. Her mother tells her stories, revealing a troubled and violent marriage, and Jesse is forced to face the truth about her past. WHAT MY MOTHER TOLD ME cleverly evokes complex connections between history, memory, violence and cultural identity.
Learn more

Daughter Rite

"Daughter Rite is a classic, the missing link between the 'direct Cinema' documentaries and the later hybrids that acknowledged truth couldn't always be found in front of a camera lens. Scandalous in its day for bending the rules of representation to enlighten its audience about filmmaking, DAUGHTER RITE has a lot to teach folks hooked on reality TV, too. Citron's documentary inquiries into feminism, women in the trades, and feminist approaches to media representation are time capsules that merit re-opening." -B. Ruby Rich, author of " Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement" Includes special bonus feature, WHAT YOU TAKE FOR GRANTED, also by Michelle Citron.
Learn more

The Celine Archive

In 1932, Celine Navarro was buried alive by her own community in Northern California. This is an attempt to uncover the real story, revealing Navarro’s feminism and resistance in a time when neither was embraced, as well as the silences that haunt Filipino-American communities to this day.
Learn more

A Place of Rage

This exuberant celebration of African American women and their achievements features interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Within the context of the civil rights, Black power and feminist movements, the trio reassess how women such as Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer revolutionized American society. A stirring chapter in African American history, highlighted by music from Prince, Janet Jackson, the Neville Brothers and the Staple Singers.
Learn more

Mountains that Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama

Thirteen years, two radical activist all-stars-one conversation. Internationally renowned scholar, professor and writer Angela Davis and 89-year-old grassroots organizer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Yuri Kochiyama spent over a decade conversing intimately about personal histories and influences that shaped them and their overlapping experiences. MOUNTAINS THAT TAKE WING offers the gift of these two remarkable women’s lives, sharing the pair’s recorded exchanges in 1996 and 2008. The film’s unique format honors the scope and depth of their knowledge on topics ranging from Jim Crow laws and Japanese American internment camps, to Civil Rights, anti-war, women’s and gay liberation movements, to today’s campaigns for political prisoners and prison reform. Intercut with compelling period footage, Davis and Kochiyama’s cogent observations, keen analyses, and steadfast resolve to create a more equitable, humane world offer inspiring lessons in empowerment and community building for current and future generations.
Learn more

Cycles

Rasheeda Allen is waiting for her period, a state of anticipation familiar to all women. Drawing on Caribbean folklore, this exuberant experimental drama uses animation and live action to discover a film language unique to African American women. The multilayered soundtrack combines a chorus of women's voices with the music of Africa and the diaspora-including Miriam Makeba, acappella singers from Haiti and trumpetiste Clora Bryant. The 1991, 4-minute short film A PERIOD PIECE is also available for purchase. Please contact [email protected] for ordering information.
Learn more

Poetry of Resilience

Academy® Award nominated director Katja Esson’s (FERRY TALES, LATCHING ON) exquisitely made film explores survival, strength and the power of the human heart, body and soul—as expressed through poetry. She highlights six different poets, who individually survived Hiroshima, the Holocaust, China’s Cultural Revolution, the Kurdish Genocide in Iraq, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Iranian Revolution. By summoning the creative voice of poetry to tell stories of survival and witness, each reclaims humanity and dignity in the wake of some of history’s most dehumanizing circumstances. POETRY OF RESILIENCE gives us an intimate look into the language of the soul and brings us closer to understanding the insanity of war and how art will flourish, in spite of any obstacle.This film is recommended for courses in poetry studies, literature, peace and conflict studies and genocide studies.
Learn more

Call Me Human

International award-winning Innu writer and poet Joséphine Bacon, a meditation on interconnectedness, and an anti-colonialist story about revitalizing Indigenous languages.
Learn more

The Poetry Deal: A Film with Diane di Prima

She remains the most famous woman poet of the Beat Generation; her friend Allen Ginsberg called her “heroic in life and poetics.” THE POETRY DEAL is an impressionistic documentary about legendary poet Diane di Prima. Still actively writing in her late 70s in San Francisco, where she is poet laureate, di Prima is fierce, funny and philosophical. She is a pioneer who broke boundaries of class and gender to publish her writing, and THE POETRY DEAL opens a window looking back through more than 50 years of poetry, activism, and cultural change, providing a unique women’s perspective of the Beat movement. Much of the story is told through di Prima’s recorded readings, including a deeply moving reading of her unpublished poem The Poetry Deal, reflecting on her relationship with her art. Essential for women’s studies, poetry studies, women’s history courses and more, THE POETRY DEAL puts di Prima’s life and work on screen in a unique, beautiful portrait using rare archival footage, impressionistic scenes and powerful stories told by friends and colleagues.
Learn more

Black Feminist

BLACK FEMINIST explores the double-edged sword of racial and gender oppression that Black Women face in America.
Learn more
Shopping Cart