Tribeca 2026 Review: MUTTER: THE DIARY OF A MOTHER, Primarily a Story of Love, but There Is Blood, Death, and a Monster

Mutter: The Diary of a Mother starts more or less where Rosemary’s Baby famously ended: with acceptance.

When Gül (Hazar Ergüçlü) has to give birth in the backseat of the car, in the middle of an empty road, there is already something very clearly wrong. At the first sight of the newborn, her husband Cem (Erdeniz Kurucan) promptly runs off and doesn’t reappear at their home again. Left entirely on her own inside an almost dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere, Gül nurtures and takes care of the child, who looks like a little flesh-eating alien from a bunch of old sci-fi horror movies.

At first, it might seem like Mutter, directed by Turkish filmmaker Alphan Eseli, would go the way of Jan Švankmajer’s unsettling masterpiece Little Otik, with its folklore motives and vivid surrealistic imagery. And it does, but only to a certain point.

Even though there is a little monster hiding in the dark corner at the edge of the screen, Eseli’s film mostly chooses to remain strangely realistic. Removing the fantastical element of the setup actually reveals a frighteningly relevant story: the reality of single motherhood in an inherently flawed patriarchal society.

Despite the enthusiastic and graphic gore of the opening scene, Mutter then unfolds almost like an elegy, with its cold, muted color palette, and the camera tracking the beautiful but apathetic landscape that becomes symbolic of the world’s treatment of Gül and other women like her in general. Whether it’s the outside world making an appearance or Gül venturing outside her home out of necessity, nothing truly breaks the state of isolation in which she exists. The society dominated by men is predisposed to ostracize a lonely woman like her for her social standing, blame her for her husband’s wrongdoings, or view her as an object of desire.

A cold, hostile environment, both literal and figurative, only serves to strengthen the bond between the new mother and her unusual child, only ever so slightly exaggerating the plights that many women go through after experiencing pregnancy and giving birth. The discomfort of nursing, the profound feeling of loneliness, and the necessity to care for, feed, and keep the baby safe are presented in a fantastical, grotesque form, which doesn’t take away from the rawness and relatability of it all.

At the same time, Mutter: The Diary of a Mother is still a creature feature at heart, with a thoughtfully created design of a baby monster, who can come off as both repellent and touchingly vulnerable. And like in many creature movies, the real subject is, of course, love -- the kind that often ends in blood but is profound, wonderfully weird, and beautiful nevertheless. 

The film enjoyed its world premiere at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. Visit the film's page at the official site for more information.