Treat Me Like Your Mother | BFI Flare 2026
A fascinating archive dive blending fuzzy analogue memories and stories of Lebanon's enduring trans aunties.
Having had a little experience working with archives, I'm willing to forgive the slowness of a film that accurately represents the process of sifting through a collection. You want to spend time with every item, to breathe it in and carry it with you.
Treat Me Like Your Mother understands that, and it certainly earns being described as “meditative” through its willingness to quietly linger on a single out-of-focus photograph and let the viewer find their own feelings about it.
Mohamad Abdouni clearly had a profound and meaningful connection to the images he showcases in his film; the intersplicing of his own childhood with the wealth of photographs from his spiritual “aunties” is a really creative way to tell us something about the importance of trans women in his native Lebanon.
Besides that, mixing of imagery, Treat Me Like Your Mother is remarkably and admirably restrained in its form. I really liked Abdouni's commitment to only using his own father's VHS footage, a single format of archival film photography, lightly-edited voice-overs from interviews, and brief flashes of modern HD footage.
What's even more impressive is that this film wasn't meant to happen; as Abdouni explained, it's part of a larger project including an archive, a book, and an oral history – its narration track wasn't even bespoke, instead being sourced from interviews not intended for use in this way.
It's no wonder the film doesn't really have a clear narrative throughline, but I don't think that really matters. It moves through topics and experiences common in trans people's lives: sex work, violence, creepy men, but also community, tenacity, and love.
This was one of the last films I saw at this year's Flare, and a very different film – but I was very pleasantly surprised. It's a wonderful exercise in form, and a great celebration of the archive it draws from.
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