A Mother Apart follows acclaimed spoken word artist and queer activist Staceyann Chin as she embarks on a deeply personal journey to understand her estranged mother — the woman who abandoned her in Jamaica at the age of nine. In this brutally honest documentary, Chin asks the painful question: Why would a mother leave her child?

Now a mother herself, raising her daughter Zuri in a loving, stable home, Staceyann confronts the emotional legacy of her own upbringing. Through evocative cut-out animation, archival photographs, and intimate storytelling, she’s on a journey — searching, waiting, confronting, and ultimately questioning the woman who gave her life but never truly mothered her. As Chin begins to understand the social and economic hardships her mother faced — being Black, female, and poor — she moves toward a complicated, hard-won empathy.

Directed by Laurie Townshend, whose own longing for motherhood lends a powerful emotional resonance to the film, A Mother Apart is a courageous exploration of abandonment, identity, and the enduring pull of family.