Perfect Films to Celebrate Mothers All Year Round

Since moms never get a day off, we hope you get to celebrate Mother’s Day all year long.

To remember why it should be a year-long celebration, we’re showcasing five films that explore and embrace the unbelievable challenges and triumphs mothers of all types face every day.

Housekeepers for Beginners

In Housekeeping for Beginners, writer-director Goran Stolevski captures the crazy, often comic work of keeping a family together. When Dita (Anamaria Marinca) must take on the job of raising her girlfriend’s two children—a troublemaking little girl (Dzada Selim) and a rebellious teen (Mia Mustafi)—everyone in her crowded home—from local friends to her roommate (Vladimir Tintor) and his new boyfriend (Samson Selim)—help out. While Dita may not be the two girls’ biological mom, Rolling Stone writes, “She truly is mother, in every sense of the phrase.” As she rises to the occasion to hold her charmingly messy family together, the film shows us, Little White Lies writes, “Love, within Dita’s crowded household, manifests itself in many ways.”

Watch Housekeeping for Beginners on Apple TV or Amazon!

Tully

In 2015, screenwriter Diablo Cody was inspired to write Tully after giving birth to her third child and needing to take on a night nurse. "I had never seen a film about postpartum depression,” Cody explains in the production notes. Working with director Jason Reitman, Cody created a whole new story about motherhood, one that was equally funny, frightening, and fantastical. In the film, Marlo (Charlize Theron), a sleep-deprived mother struggling with a new infant in addition to her two rambunctious children, agrees to hire a night nurse named Tully (Mackenzie Davis). Through this mysterious nurse, Marlo renegotiates both what it means to be a mother and who she was before giving birth. Theron tells Marie Claire, “We don’t necessarily always get the entire truth told about what it takes to be a mother.” Pushing to tell a different story, “The film (and the actress) go places we never see in cinematic portrayals of motherhood,” writes The Wrap.

Watch Tully now on Apple TV or Amazon!

A Thousand and One

A.V. Rockwell's A Thousand and One won the Grand Jury Prize at last year's Sundance Film Festival for its moving portrayal of a mother raising her son in New York City in the 1990s and 2000s. After Inez (Teyana Taylor) is released from prison, she kidnaps her son Terry from foster care, taking him to Harlem to raise him. Taylor tapped her own experience as a mother to make her character both real and unforgettable. “I think her being a mother in real life really shines through in her portrayal,” Rockwell tells Cinema Daily. Never shying away from the complex reality of being a Black mother in America, Taylor’s portrayal of motherhood is inspiring and eye-opening. The Washington Post writes, “This is a tough, beautiful, honest and bracingly hopeful movie about mutual care and unconditional love, with a transformative and indelible performance at its core.”

Watch A Thousand and One on Apple TV or Amazon!

Let Him Go

In Let Him Go, filmmaker Thomas Bezucha recasts the traditional American Western by making mothers the central characters. In the early 1960s, retired sheriff George Blackledge (Kevin Costner) and his wife Margaret (Diane Lane), still mourning the death of their only son, have their tragedy compounded when their daughter-in-law and her new husband take their grandson to live in North Dakota. To make matters worse, his new family, ruled by its iron matriarch (Lesley Manville), has no interest in including the boy’s grandparents in his upbringing. So the two mothers face each other down for the boy’s future. The New Yorker summed up the drama’s pull by writing, “The film has two mothers of steel, squaring up to each other, and two formidable actresses, of radically different styles, face to face.”

Watch Let Him Go on Apple TV or Amazon!

The Kids Are All Right

In Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a couple raising two kids (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) whose lives are turned upside down when they meet their sperm-donor dad (Mark Ruffalo). Cholodenko reframes the very concept of family with charm, comedy, and intelligence. The critically acclaimed film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. While many raved about its subtle representation of same-sex marriage and alternative families, NPR writes, “If The Kids Are All Right can be said to have a gay sensibility at all, it lies in the film's rousing defense of one of the most maligned figures in American cinema—the strong mother.”

Watch The Kids Are All Right now on Apple TV or Amazon!