WRITER / DIRECTOR
PRODUCER: JADEY DUFFIELD
Lilith is being taken over from the inside… disappearing from the world. Slowly, but surely, her family and friends and medical professionals stop listening to her, stop hearing her, stop seeing her. Ignored more and more in the motherhood process, society’s disregard of Lilith’s desires, and of her own sense of identity begins to have physical manifestations. Lilith begins to fall apart; literally.
Blood, viscera, rent bones and torn flesh pierce the sugary glaze of soft pink pillows and talcom powder. Yummy Mummy bursts through the common representation of pregnancy like a long-caged animal escaping from its bonds.
Yummy Mummy is an exploration of the loss of identity during pregnancy and early motherhood: When one person becomes two, then attempts to become only one, once again. It highlights the emotional conflict of the mother-and-child symbiosis, and the mental health struggles a lot of women face when choosing to become mothers.
YUMMY MUMMY was a BFI NETWORK funded film produced by Dreammore Films
Executive Producers
Alice Cabañas, Alix Taylor-Searle, Ruth Thompson
for the BFI Network South West
Associate Producer
Robin Ingle
Producer
Jadey Duffield
A DREAMMORE FILMS PRODUCTION
Writer / Director
Gabriela Staniszewska
STARRING
Lilith Yasemin Özdemir
Ryan Joe Layton
Pam Cath Shipton
Midwife Carolyn Jolliffe
with
Pam’s Friend Lynn Thomas
Baby Shower Guests Tabitha Taya & Danielle Styles
WITH THE TALENTS OF
Director of Photography Scott Wharram
Sound Design David Yapp, Paul Donovan & Richard hinton at films@59
Production Design Rosa Truelove
Make Up & Prosthetics Anna Randall
Costume Design Rachel Saunders
Music Danielle Styles & Gabriela Staniszewska
And the rest of our incredible crew
A massive thank you to our amazing Crowdfunders.
Without you none of this would have been possible.
THANK YOU
A dissociative loss of selfhood is intrinsic to the body horror genre, but traditionally this comes as a direct result of internal physical transformations. For Lilith though, it is only a secondary consequence to external factors, for in the eyes of those around her she is no longer Lilith: she is The Bump. For the majority of Yummy Mummy its commentary on how the pregnant are treated is played for absurdist laughs: the beleaguered other-to-be enduring a rotating parade of in-laws, health workers and strangers proffering their unsolicited advice in the presence of The Bump, whilst increasingly neglecting the well-being of its bearer.
However, the horror of the situation soon escalates: after her mood-lifting cinema visit is admonished as a nutritional catastrophe, Lilith’s agency is diminished further, her state increasingly resembling a psychosis-laced form of locked-in syndrome. The film’s sobering final scene seems to carry an additional metaphorical resonance in the light of the recent overturning of Roe v Wade in the United States: when The Bump is elevated to the sacrosanct, the person bearing it is implicitly demoted to the status of its mere vessel.
Jonathan Bygraves, Encounters Festival 2022
