With Grant Sputore, we once again got a first-time director at the Sneak - but that does'nt mean that he's a newbie altogether. The Australian founded his film company "The Penguin Empire" right after finishing his university studies and has directed and produced a number of commercials as well as a short film. After a more ambitious project fell through, he and his pal Michael Lloyd Green tried a smaller, more intimate story starting from the visual of a robot cradling a baby. Their script "Mother" stirred up quite some interest in Hollywood and was on the famous "Black List" (a list of unproduced, by highly praised movie scripts) back in 2016. A year later, he secured funding so that the creation of the robot main character could start - this was done by Weta in New Zealand, where they actually built a robot suit for a person to walk in. Whenever mother is on screen Weta tech Luke Hawker was acually in the suit
while a colleague animatronically controlled the lights and lenses on the robot. Only a few shots in the final third of the movie were enhanced by computer graphics - if you've seen the film you immediately know which scenes those are. The film was shown at Sundance film festival and was immediately picked up by Netflix for US distribution; in other countries - like Germany - the film gets a theatrical release.
Here's the trailer for "I am Mother":
How did you like "I am Mother", which in essence is a two-person-and-a-robot play? How did you like the perfomances by Danish actress Clara Rugaard as the daughter, Hilary Swank as a nameless woman and Luke Hawker and Rose Byrne as the performer and the voice of "Mother", respectively? How did you enjoy the story which seems to borrow elements from quite a few other sci-fi movies? Write down what you thought about "I am Mother" as a reply to this post - and remember, there are no wrong answers ...
Somit war ich den Film schnell offern gegenüber und in kurzert Zeit auch regelrecht begeistert, er hatte einige Ähnlichkeiten mit Filmen, die ich einfach klasse finde, ich hatte zB die Einsamkeit die in Moon und auch 2001 prägend ist, verspürt und das war ebenso stimmig und gut umgesetzt. Allgemein fand ich die Optik sehr ansprechend und muss sagen, dass ich dem Film nicht anmerken konnte, dass es ein Erstlingswerk war - da freue ich mich auf weitere Filme des Regisseurs! Da bleibt mir wieder nur die 1 zu zücken...