Part of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s mission is to foster greater understanding through world cinema. This year 72 Foreign Language films were submitted for Golden Globes consideration. Here is an overview of one of them.

Imagine you are a young child. Your mother comes home after an extended absence. The only problem: you don’t recognize her. She has had plastic surgery. Such is the premise of the psychological horror thriller Goodnight Mommy. Its writers/directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala have been around the world with their film that premiered at the Venice Festival in 2014 and was released in 2015. “The idea occurred to us while watching TV.” They recently told us, “on German television there are so called docu-soaps, one dealing with women undergoing plastic surgery: women not regarded as beautiful get money for expensive beauty operations. For that process they are separated from their families, sometimes as long as three months. After that the families are reunited. It's one of those glamorous television moments. But if you look closely at the children’s faces as they take a first glance at their mothers again, there is no joy, just some kind of uneasiness. That was the moment that made us go: What if a child really wouldn't recognize his mother?“

The original German title of the film is Ich Seh, Ich Seh (I See, I See) and stars acclaimed Austrian actress Susanne Wuest as a mother who returns to her children after having her face altered during plastic surgery. Her twin boys, played by real life twins Lukas and Elias Schwarz, do not recognize her. The psychological horror thriller takes the audience on a rollercoaster journey of self-discovery. So far the film has won nine awards all over the world. “We never thought about dividing our responsibilities,” say Franz and Fiala. “We literally did everything on this film together, we spoke with one voice all the time. That only works because we trust each other 100%. We know we both fight for the same ideas, for the same film. Its not about ego or vanity. The only time we fought was in the last days of editing, when it came to making the final decisions. The single disadvantage we have noticed is that each of us only got half of a director’s salary!”

Elisabeth Sereda