Mother Mary

Mother Mary is a 2026 psychological drama written and directed by David Lowery and released by A24. Anne Hathaway plays Mother Mary, a world-famous musical artist getting ready for a comeback performance after an accident on stage.

A costume fitting overwhelms Mary, and she flees to the English countryside to find Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), a fashion designer who was once her lover and creative partner. The two have been estranged. Mary's show is three days away, and Sam grudgingly agrees to design her a dress.

IndieWire called the result a "hypnotic, formally unbound psychodrama." Most of it plays out between the two women in an unheated barn outside London. Along the way it becomes a lavish pop melodrama, with original songs written by Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff and FKA twigs, all sung by Hathaway.

Reviewers describe the film's central idea as the vampiric nature of artistic collaboration: creators feed on each other's pain to make their work. Lowery uses the relationship between a pop idol and the designer who helped build her image to ask what the art costs the people behind it. He also asks whether love and resentment can be pulled apart once two lives have become one creative project.

IndieWire put it this way: by the end, Sam's love and hate for Mary are "as tightly bound together as a verse and its chorus." The film treats that tangle as the truth of the relationship rather than something to fix.

Critics and viewers read the film in several ways:

Mother Mary came out during a stretch when pop stardom was a common subject for film, and it uses the real music industry directly. Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff and FKA twigs wrote songs for it, and Hathaway recorded a full album in character, with singles released ahead of the film. IndieWire compared Mary to a Lady Gaga-like diva, and Lowery used Taylor Swift's Reputation as a production reference, so the film is closely tied to modern pop spectacle.

Critics were split. IndieWire called it a "divinely strange pop psychodrama," while the Boston Globe said it "goes too heavy on metaphor." It earned around $3 million against a $20 million budget, which suggests it is more likely to last as a divisive cult item than as a mainstream hit.

What people praised: the performances by Hathaway and Coel, the ambitious form, the original pop songs from Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff and FKA twigs, and Hathaway's singing. Some reviews were very enthusiastic; IndieWire called it hypnotic and "divinely strange."

What people criticized: overloaded symbolism (the Boston Globe said it "goes too heavy on metaphor"), a slow and oblique structure, and the feeling that the film strains to find meaning. Moviejawn called it "a haunting tale of two halves," which points to uneven pacing.

Overall: reviews were mixed and it did poorly at the box office, but it has a devoted audience who admire how strange it is.