Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on Fire!
There is a long tradition of the changeling child in folklore. A young child suddenly “changes,” and it’s attributed to the actual child being spirited away by the fae or by some other supernatural creature and replaced with something that looks like the child but is clearly different. It’s actually pretty good evidence that there were autistic people a thousand years ago. It’s also a particular trope in folklore that has been sadly underused in movies. The closest we have is something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is the alien invasion version of a changeling story. You Are Not My Mother is a film that dives head-first into the idea of a changeling child, and does so with good effect.
The film opens with us watching Rita Delaney (Ingrid Craigie) taking her infant granddaughter to the forest and placing the baby on the ground. She lights a ring of fire around the baby, and the film cuts just as we start to hear the baby crying. I promise, despite what it looks like, the baby is not lit on fire.
