ORIGINS

An experimental documentary challenging the status of motherhood and what it means to be a mother.
The film is split into two sequences that run parallel to each other and sways the narrative between fictional and documentary. The first sequence is an orange hued interview between mother, Jill, and daughter, Natalie. This is in contrast with the experimental, blue hued night scenes, which reenact one of Jill's sleepless nights living with insomnia.
Within the interview Jill recounts her different experiences of motherhood; miscarriages, the childbirth experience, being one of five siblings in a transracial adoption, and subsequently touches on the pandemic of forced adoptions in the Sixties and the impacts on her biological mother. The two sequences connect at the end of the interview, when Jill reveals her strained relationship with sleep shadows her adoptive mothers relationship with sleeping pills, and subsequently describes her first experiences of motherhood.
The film follows the story arc that is common in myths, that Joseph Campbell labelled the hero's journey. Origins follows the hero's journey by repeating the first question that was asked at the start of the interview, at the end; what makes a mother? Jill answers the same question but with a different, more embracive answer compared to the beginning, since realising the significant turning points that has influenced her outlook on motherhood.