Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother , a film written and directed by Bassem Tariq, was released in theatres on October 16, 2026, in the United States. This gritty film, living somewhere between action and drama, describes the breaking point of a devout Muslim assassin brought on after the sudden death of his wife has left him a single father to three children.

Tariq crafts this arthouse thriller with unique storytelling choices and a specific artistic style. Notably, it features a talented cast with highly acclaimed actors: Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito, Laith Nakli, and Abubakr Ali. This compelling film marries complex, soulful themes with impeccable acting to deliver a story that balances a pulpy plot with swaths of quiet, dense emotion. It seems to exist outside of the Islamophobic gaze with a refreshing lack of self-consciousness about its overarching religious exploration. Although I am not a particular fan of violence and action, I agree that a larger film budget would have resulted in more extensive fight scenes, which could have better showcased Latif’s atypical weapon of choice: swords/blades. That said, there was plenty of violence for my personal taste, but it was visually interesting and unexpected. While I would give this film five stars, I would only recommend it for adult audiences (its R-rating is well-deserved) and Muslim viewers who can grapple with the basic premise of this film without being offended.

Summary

Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother follows Latif, a hitman who follows a moral code of his own making, heavily inspired by Islam. He is on an assassination plot away from home when he receives news of his wife’s death. The grief from her loss and his sudden inheritance of all of her familial responsibilities send him into a tailspin that emerges as a crisis of faith. The plot outwardly centers on two storylines which intersect with devastating consequences: Latif’s search for breast milk for his infant who is allergic to formula and a work assignment that drops him into the middle of a feud between a non-practicing Muslim pornography producer (Abubakr Ali) and an unhinged evangelical pastor (John Cho). Set in Houston and presumably present-day, the characters traverse different social worlds, such as working-class family life, the African-American Muslim community, the immigrant Muslim community, and fanatical Christian cult culture. Will Latif be able to meet the basic needs of his children at their greatly differing ages? Will he be able to protect his family and those he loves when the danger he’s invited into his life via the nature of his clandestine work comes knocking?

Don’t worry! The entirety of this review contains no spoilers .

Recommendations for Muslim Audiences

This film is one I only suggest to adult Muslim viewers who have the stomach to handle the exploration of religious themes in an unconventional manner that some may find bordering on irreverent. While I personally found this film to be one of the most compelling representations of American-Muslim characters, which ultimately left me feeling closer to Allah , I do not think this feeling will extend to some Muslim audiences. If you’re unsure if this film is for you, I recommend you watch the official trailer and also check out the Viewer’s Guide for content warnings below.

Viewer’s Guide

Drinking, Drugs, Smoking

- Smoking, once

Sex, Romance & Nudity

- A major character (Hadi) runs a pornography website catered towards Muslim men

- The homepage of the website & clips of a porn video are shown with brief glimpses of women shown in undergarments and lingerie

- Explicit references to sexual acts alongside crude innuendo

- Sexual content discussed with and viewed by young characters

- A visit to what was once a strip club, with somewhat distorted spray-painted images of women in provocative clothing and poses

Language

- Plenty

Violence

A handful of violent scenes featuring guns, blades/knives/swords, and physical hand-to-hand combat

Plot

The plot tells a story that somehow works in its odd placement within the worlds of potentially-justified violence and a family’s struggle to resume everyday life. While the mercenary work in the religious underworld is wholly unrealistic to most viewers, the family’s painful journey in the wake of death is entirely relatable. As the story progresses with larger-than-life characters misbehaving in outlandish confrontations, the constant anchor that roots the plot is the family’s continuous goose hunt for breast milk all over Houston. The film is simultaneously intense and quiet, with a balance of forward movement pushing the story itself along and pauses, at times extended, to let the characters’ interiority shine.

Although the film’s title emphasizes the high status of mothers in Islam, the mother, Khadijah, is mostly absent from the film. Perhaps this is the biggest downside of the film. Including more about her would have added more strong female characters in the film, which is largely a male-centric story. However, the brief and vague flashbacks we do get about Khadijah give us enough information to contextualize Latif and his family’s predicament. It is clear this story is really about Latif as a father learning about fatherhood with the haunting mantra “your mother, your mother, your mother” imprisoning him inside his very own pressure cooker. That said, Latif’s daughter, Fatihah, does the heavy lifting as the sole reliable female presence within the film.

Acting

The acting is brilliant, and there is already talk of Actor-of-the-Year for Mahershala Ali. He plays a deft anti-hero character, one we want to see prevail but also feel disappointed in. He holds his own through extremely vacillating emotions in various challenging situations. John Cho and Abubakr Ali deliver some much-needed comedic relief to lighten up this dense film with their eccentric characters. The performance that stood out the most to me was actually newcomer Adia’s. Her depiction of the character Fatihah was poignant and somehow counterbalanced the male-dominated film as the only regular feminine energy throughout the work.

Visuals and Score

Director Bassem Tariq’s unique artistic expression guided the visuals of Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother towards establishing the strong mood of the film. Using blown-out windows during intensely emotional scenes allows viewers to focus solely on internal character struggles, mostly of Latif. One of the most unusual choices was at times when there is a jump in the plot and the story is en route to a new setting. Some of these shots are upside-down, like a drone gradually zooming in and righting itself to a new location or showing the road slip quickly underneath a car and then panning up to a wider view. To me, these symbolized disorienting emotional free-falls along the story as Latif and company are further drained and exhausted by the demands of caring for a young infant while facing sleep disruptions and a lack of proper fueling during Ramadan fasts.

The score of this film included interesting choices with sparse or absolutely no music and little-to-no background noise in some scenes. This is the quietest film I have ever seen, and while realizing the absolute silence in some scenes was surprising to me, it worked wonderfully when deployed. I imagined it as the stifling, suffocating feeling of being trapped in a hot, silent elevator, slowly feeling like you’re being squished to death in a void. This also contributed to the anxious mood I associated with newborn baby days in my own motherhood journey. There are entire dialogue scenes where there is no noise other than the actors’ speech, effectively building tension. There are moments when we see an extended close-up of a character and simply hear crickets, a coming train, or the buzz of a lightbulb. When the score is sparse, there is a lot of atmospheric, deep humming. Especially when watching in a theater, you’ll feel the deep pitches vibrating inside your chest. There are also some fun, quirky moments of Christian music within the film–all live and paired in interesting ways with the action on the screen.

Muslim Representation and Thematic Elements from the Perspective of a Muslim Viewer

I found Latif’s character to be one of the most compelling representations of a Muslim struggling with his faith in a fictional story. But, for some Muslims who may be a little squeamish when it comes to Islamic representation being 100% straight-laced, some of the representation of Islam and/or Muslims may be off-putting. How can a film be about a devoutly practicing Muslim assassin; isn’t that an oxymoron? Why is the activity of a Muslim pornography production company an element that pushes the plot forward? If Muslim viewers can’t satisfactorily answer these questions for themselves as the film progresses, they may find the representation of Islam within this film confusing, disrespectful, or irreverent. In my opinion, however, the film does a great job of explaining these far-fetched questions and justifies their inclusion in the story. However, while I went to bat for Mustache to be screened in third spaces for Muslim youth, I cannot do the same here by any means.

In fact, Imam Suhaib Webb gave a khutbah inspired by the film . He said Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother brought him to tears, but also addressed guidelines informed by adherence to Islamic law that Muslim artists and creators should consider following, especially when promoting their projects as Islamic or representing Muslims. He specifically objected to a scene in which a party bus full of sex workers was parked at a masjid on a Ramadan night, as well as the number of f-bombs included within the film. I do agree that I wish there had been less sexual content in the film, including visuals and speech. If the sole reason the more explicit content was included in the film was simply to get laughs from the audience, I don’t know if I would have included it in the movie if it was something I was creating. I still do have to defend the director’s integrity on this subject matter because I personally believe that other directors of films on the same subject matter would have included much more explicit content without blinking twice, given that the violence already earned this movie its R-rating.

Lastly, I wholeheartedly agree that we need to tone down the profanity in films and shows set in Muslim societies. The overuse of the f-word shows a lack of creativity and intelligent writing. To me, it’s ugly and lazy. Many projects that are created by Muslims and feature Muslims as the center of their story’s universe can fall into using salacious material for comedy and littering the work with profanities. I’m looking at you, “Man Like Mobeen,” “Bait,” and “Mo”–all shows that I have loved but wished things were a bit more reigned in. All that said, my personal opinion when it comes to creative Muslim projects is to keep all the real life in there, but do so with great intentionality and consideration.

Positive standouts when it comes to representing Islam and Muslims in this film are the following:

- The centering of Islamic sacred scripture and even calligraphy as sacred artwork.

- The inclusion of an important incident from the Prophet Muahmmad’s life.

- A generous imam who is willing to meet his community members where they are, but potentially needs to set stricter boundaries.

- Depicting sacred Islamic acts (ritual prayer, death rituals, fasting, etc.) in varied contexts.

I believe these elements will increase non-Muslim filmgoers’ knowledge of and respect for Islam and Muslims.

Critical, nuanced representations of Islam and Muslim that hold up a mirror for Muslims to consider about our own communities include:

- Masjids in different neighborhoods and the disparities that exist between them.

- Complicitly allowing members within the community to be in leadership roles because of their wealth, power, and influence.

- Being gentle and kind to children as they learn Islam, contrasted nicely between Latif’s kids and Hadi’s experiences as a child.

- Navigating crises of faith with grace, patience, and discipline.

- Allowing flawed Muslims to still be Muslim with compassion.

Finally, I found the inclusion of interfaith perspectives with the Christian cult and Mormon characters within the film profound. The film acknowledges religious and spiritual aspects of life as part of the reality of being human. It depicts ideas that align with what Islam teaches: we all need a connection to the Divine to help give our lives purpose. Some of us find it within Islam, while others don’t. There is a complex overlap between Latif and Hwan (John Cho), who serve as character foils.

From the Perspective of a Mother

Wow, did this film remind me of my struggles breastfeeding both my children and the mental health issues I experienced post-partum. Latif’s character seems like he’s going through postpartum anxiety and depression, brought on by a demanding infant to take care of after the loss of his wife. I have heard many dismiss the necessity of breast milk for baby Aziza, but my older child was allergic to formula as well. We had a similar, stressful experience which left me with no choice but to exclusively breastfeed after a seasoned pediatrician made me promise we’d stop trying formula when leaving the ER one night.

There were also little moments when Latif was so frustrated, tired, sleep-deprived, overstimulated, etc., that made me laugh as a mother. I have literally heard similar words in the same tone escape my own mouth in response to my children, just like I’m sure many mothers who perform the lion’s share of childrearing and domestic duties have.

I also loved how Latif was on a journey discovering what it meant to be a father in a new way while upholding the idea that mothers are just better. Latif strives to match the level of care his widower provided for their family, but he’s flailing. It emphasizes the invisible labor women provide their families and the special role many mothers play as the heart and soul of the family unit. Ultimately, it really did place the ethereal mother figure three times higher in status than the father, in accordance with Islamic tradition.

Final Thoughts

Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother won’t be every Muslim’s cup of tea, but it is a great film nonetheless. It’s a moving story about a father struggling with the weight of his family, grief, and faith dressed up as an action/thriller film. Muslim audiences, do your best to determine if this is a film you’d be able to appreciate. If it is, get ready for a one-of-a-kind film! Make sure to catch it in cinemas to support movies from Muslim filmmakers.

Related:

– Mustache Film Review: A Heartfelt Treat

– Farha Film Review: Palestinian Stories Will Be Heard

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