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The Mother and the Bear

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The Mother and the Bear
Directed byJohnny Ma
Written byJohnny Ma
Produced byJuan de Dios Larraín
Niv Fichman
StarringKim Ho-jung
CinematographyInti Briones
Edited byValeria Hernández
Music byMarie-Hélène L. Delorme
Production
companies
Rhombus Media
Fabula
Thin Stuff Productions
Distributed byElevation Pictures
Release date
  • September 6, 2024 (2024-09-06) (TIFF)
Running time
100 minutes
CountriesCanada
Chile
LanguagesEnglish
Korean

The Mother and the Bear is a Canadian/Chilean comedy-drama film, written and directed by Johnny Ma and released in 2024.[1] The film stars Kim Ho-jung as Sara, a woman from South Korea who flies to Canada after her daughter Sumi (Leere Park), who emigrated to Winnipeg some years earlier, is injured in a fall that has left her comatose, only to discover how much she didn't know about her daughter's life.[2]

The cast also includes Lee Won-jae, Jonathan Kim, Amara Pedroso, Samantha Kendrick and Susan Hanson.

The film premiered in the Centrepiece program at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival,[3] followed by a gala screening at the 2024 Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival.[1]

Critical response

[edit]

Ritesh Mehta of IndieWire graded the film a B, writing that "Any weaknesses lie more in the slightly tired general themes Ma explores. The Mother and the Bear doesn't bring a lot of new material to the familiar narrative of parents becoming enlightened towards their child's sexuality. Even the story engine about the discovery of online dating and the chain of cutesy indiscretions that follows doesn't feel particularly novel. After all, Canada has already given global audiences a series worth of laughs at the expense of ajummas, in Kim's Convenience. Though perhaps that's an unfair comparison; maybe it's because we've chuckled alongside that CBC sitcom, or absorbed the pathos of intergenerational Asian journeys (towards the old country) in films like Return to Seoul and The Farewell, that we're able to better appreciate the subtle intermingling of comedy and drama that Ma and Kim bring about in The Mother and the Bear."[4]

References

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  1. ^ a b Heidi Ulrichsen, "Forget hockey rivalry: Sudbury’s Cinéfest 2024 showing love for North Bay". Sudbury.com, August 22, 2024.
  2. ^ Kim Izzo, "Five Canadian features among TIFF Centrepiece programme". Playback, August 6, 2024.
  3. ^ Alex Nino Gheciu, "Dystopian themes, real-world issues spotlighted in Canadian films at TIFF". CityNews, August 22, 2024.
  4. ^ Ritesh Mehta, "‘The Mother and the Bear’ Review: A Mother Catfishes Her Comatose Daughter in an Endearing Dramedy About Immigrant Loneliness". IndieWire, September 6, 2024.
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