Voice Messages From My Mom

The story

Inspired by Chantal Akerman’s News From Home, this intimate short film follows a Nigerian student in the Netherlands as she receives a series of WhatsApp voice messages from her mother. While we hear the mother’s voice, we see the daughter moving through her routines in Maastricht. As the voice messages accumulate, they reveal the emotional complexities between a mother and daughter living in different worlds. The contrast between the voice and the visuals reveal the unspoken tension between them: love expressed through control, sacrifice that becomes expectation, and the loneliness that can grow between two people who are always in contact but no longer fully connected. The film explores what it means to be loved by someone who doesn’t entirely understand you, and the emotional burden that can come with that love.