'It's A Weird Time To Be A Mom': If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Director Explains The Rise Of The Maternal Breakdown Film

When Mary Bronstein wrote If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, she did it alone, translating a deeply personal experience with her own daughter into a fictionalized story of a mom unraveling under the pressures of motherhood. When the film was released in January 2025, it was an early sign of a trend that has persisted as the year progressed: filmmakers are turning their cameras on maternal trauma.

“When you make a film, you’re not in dialogue with other films that are being made,” Bronstein tells SheKnows. “But in filmmaking, there’s a sort of synergy or osmosis of things that are going on in the air that creators catch, so that’s why we can see some films with similar themes come out at the same time.”

That synergy gave rise to Lynne Ramsey’s Die My Love, in which Jennifer Lawrence plays a mother slipping into postpartum psychosis, which was followed by Chloe Zhao’s Oscar-nominated Hamnet, a period film that captures the timelessness of maternal grief. Later came The Testament of Ann Lee, featuring visceral depictions of traumatic childbirths that earned praise for director Mona Fastvold.

“I think right now, we’re in a very, very, weird place for women, and we’re in an even weirder place for mothers in our society because of how our rights are being taken away. It’s a weird time to be a mom,” Bronstein says by way of explanation for this emerging trend in film. “Our rights about how we can decide to have a child, if we’re allowed to make that decision for ourselves, who has the resources to make that decision? Who doesn’t? It feels very scary.”

Bronstein’s film, which earned lead actress Rose Byrne a Golden Globe win and an Oscar nomination, meditates on a mother struggling to care for her child who is suffering from a mysterious illness. Her husband, a ship captain, is away for work. The ceiling of her apartment caves in, flooding her home and forcing her and her daughter into a cramped motel. She must negotiate with her daughter’s doctor about her treatment, deal with contractors fixing her home, and try (and fail) to help her clients at her therapy clinic, all while her own therapist (Conan O’Brien) becomes increasingly weary of her.

Bronstein’s goal was to capture the isolation of motherhood and what caring for a child looks like without support, an apparent response to the increasingly volatile socio-economic pressures placed on parents.

“Who our country has decided to put in charge and those making up the Supreme Court have doubled down on this idea that a pregnant woman is a very, very valuable thing,” Bronstein says. “But once you have that baby and you become a mom, there’s nothing.”

“Because once you’re a mom, you’re supposed to just know how to figure it out,” she says. “There are no resources. We live in a society that doesn’t normalize the community taking part in raising children. You’re alone.”

In If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Bronstein doesn’t get explicitly political, but she does get personal. Inspired by her own experience of living out of a hotel while taking her 7-year-old daughter for medical treatment in California, Bronstein sought to voice some of the unspoken parts of motherhood.

“I’m one of those people who’s not supposed to be a mom,” Byrne’s character, Linda, says at one point in the film.

“I wasn’t seeing my experience reflected back at me,” Bronstein says. “I’m not seeing these very complicated emotions of loving your child more than you can possibly express, but at the same time, wanting permission to be like, ‘This fucking sucks sometimes.’ Or ‘I don’t want to be with my child right now.’ Or ‘I wish I could run away.’ We’re not allowed to say those things.”

“With these films and my film, hopefully other women, mothers and caregivers can be seen,” she adds. “That’s the one response I’ve gotten most from direct engagement: a lot of people tell me ‘I feel seen.'”