Bhavna Madan Mohan

If I Raised My Mother, MA Character Animation, Winner 2024 and YourNOVA, 2024

‘If I Raised My Mother’ is a two-minute film that was born out of an argument I once had with my mother. I’d told her that I would break the cycle of unhappy parent-child relationships someday, and she said, ‘It’s not as easy as you think it is’. This film is my take on what I would’ve done differently if I’d raised my mother.

Sometime within the first month of production, I realised that my mother was right. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it was. I had to re-examine everything that happened and try to understand why it happened. And so the film became a little less of ‘I wish I was raised better’, and a little more of ‘I wish I could’ve done this for Mother when she was growing up’. This is a film I made for myself, and for all other Indian daughters – my mother included.

‘If I Raised My Mother’ is a hand-drawn 2D digital animation film made primarily using TVPaint. It was written, animated and produced over five months. The music for the film was composed by Wenshan Yu from Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The art style used in the animation is inspired by children’s picture books and kid-lit art styles.

This was a film made and fuelled by my love for my mother. Every colour I picked and every line I drew speaks exactly of that.

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