After 26-year-old Sumi suffers an accident on the streets of wintry Winnipeg, her overbearing mother Sara flies in from Seoul to be by her now comatose daughter's side. As Sara meddles in Sumi's life via a dating app, she ends up on a journey that will leave her forever changed.

In a departure from his previous films, Chinese Canadian filmmaker Johnny Ma embraces a new mode here, using suburban Winnipeg as the stage for a stylized, whimsical narrative of crossed wires, secret lives, and conflicting agendas. 

Sara despairs about her daughter’s single status, so she immediately starts catfishing the pleasant Min to be Sumi’s boyfriend — once she wakes up, of course — and also gets unwittingly entangled with Min’s estranged father, Sam, who runs a Korean restaurant in the city. As Sam and the widowed Sara connect over their mutual melancholies, a chance meeting with Sumi’s co-worker Amaya leads Sara to learn more about the life from which her daughter has chosen to exclude her.

A unique mash-up of genres, The Mother and the Bear marks a bold new direction for Ma. And if you were wondering about that eponymous bear… well, you’ll just have to see the film.

Canada, Chile | 2024 | 100m | English, Korean

Director: Johnny Ma
Cast: Kim Ho-jung, Won-Jae Lee, Jonathan Kim
Distributor: Elevation 
Content Advisory: mature themes, nudity