My Mother’s Father

Original title: Pai da Minha Mãe

Directed by Otávio de Olliveira Fontes

Davi, a ten-year-old boy, shares a deeply affectionate relationship with his mother, Rosa. When Rosa experiences a schizophrenic episode, the dynamic between them is reversed: Davi assumes a caregiving role that no child should have to occupy. Set against the backdrop of a house move in Nilópolis, in Rio de Janeiro’s Baixada Fluminense, the film follows the small gestures of survival, tenderness, and exhaustion that shape their bond after his mother’s episode. My Mother’s Father is an intimate drama about love, premature maturity, and everyday resilience, approaching mental health not through the lens of diagnosis, but through the territory of affection. A quiet portrait of a childhood marked by pain, but also by the possibility of carrying on.