Hi, It's Your Mother

Daniel Sterlin-Altman’s short animation begins like a family sitcom or a TV movie from the ‘50s, only to transform into a horror, then a black comedy, and finally return to its starting point. “Hi, It’s Your Mother” not unlike David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” reveals the dark underbelly of the idealized life in the suburbs, but the animation’s ultimate purport is surprisingly optimistic and family-friendly. It turns out that bottled-up stress simply needs an outlet, even if it features a small wound and temporary, bloodloss-induced hallucinations. The film also shows that mother-child relationships are always rather twisted.