Mothering Sunday

A visit between a lesbian daughter and her volatile mother starts out like a familiar family argument, the kind built on old resentments and sharp words. But as the quarrel escalates, each new revelation is more alarming than the last, until the conversation tips from uncomfortable into genuinely frightening. Directed by Olivia McClymont from a script by Alice Birch, this seven-minute New Zealand short blends horror and comedy, using the closed-in space of the family home to wring both laughs and dread from a confrontation that keeps getting worse. Stasia Boyce, Pamela Kaval and Samantha Richardson star. Compact and darkly funny, Mothering Sunday takes the everyday tension between an unpredictable parent and a grown daughter who refuses to back down, and pushes it somewhere much stranger.