Looking like my mother

A daughter confronts inheritance, memory, and meaning after her mother’s death

Looking Like My Mother follows the personal journey of a filmmaker as she revisits her relationship with a mother shaped by illness, depression and the cultural norms of the country in which she was born. As a child, the filmmaker experiences helplessness while caring for a mother who struggles to survive each day. As a teenager, this helplessness turns into anger and a need for distance, freedom and transgression, driven by a refusal to follow the same path. With time, understanding replaces resentment, revealing the courage it took for her mother simply to continue breathing.

The film traces this evolving bond across years and emotions, capturing emptiness, grief and the gradual discovery of meaning in life. Told through words and images that shift between flamboyance and withdrawal, the narrative immerses the viewer in a flood of memories and emotional intensity. Using archival material, interviews with people close to her mother, reconstructions and playful visual experimentation, the filmmaker creates a purely cinematic evocation of memory.

Beyond a personal story, the film opens a wider reflection on filiation, transmission and what it means to be a family across three generations. Through the lens of an intimate yet visionary documentary film, Dominique Margot questions human, genetic and social inheritance. Behind her own story, the broader history and culture of Switzerland quietly emerges, grounding this deeply personal exploration in a collective context.