There is nothing as haunting as a mother’s grief over losing a child.
Anne Hathaway stars as a woman whose son has a fatal fall from her balcony, with Jessica Chastain playing her best friend and neighbor. Olivier Masset-Depasse directs the domestic drama “Mothers’ Instinct,” which is a remake of his 2017 Belgium film “Duelles” based on the novel “Derrière la Haine” by Barbara Abel.
Director Masset-Depasse won a record-breaking nine Magritte Awards from the Belgian Academy including Best Film and Best Director for the original film “Duelles.” Writer Sarah Conradt (“50 States of Fright”) adapted the English language script.
The official synopsis reads: Set in the 1960s, “Mothers’ Instinct” centers on best friends and neighbors Alice (Chastain) and Celine (Hathaway), who live in a suburban paradise. Both are mothers to two sons of the same age, and their idyllic domestic happiness is shattered after a tragic accident. Guilt, suspicion, and paranoia bleed into their friendship as a psychological battle of wills gives way to a darker side of the maternal instinct.
Lead star Hathaway called “Mothers’ Instinct” her “hardest role” to date. “It touched my worst fear and I almost backed out of the film because I didn’t know if I could go there as an actress,” the Oscar winner told Vogue Hong Kong.
Hathaway and co-star Chastain both produce the feature, which was acquired by Neon for U.S. release with Anton handling international rights. “Mothers’ Instinct” is also produced by Paul Nelson at Mosaic and Jacques-Henri Bronckart. Producer and financier Anton is fully financing the project with Anton’s Founder and CEO Sébastien Raybaud overseeing the project with Anton’s John Zois, President of Production, who negotiated the deal with CAA. CAA Media Finance arranged the film’s financing and represented the project’s domestic rights alongside Anton.
Chastain compared the psychological thriller to “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,” exclusively telling IndieWire, “Of course it’s a different kind of film, but it’s this idea of these two actresses coming together and playing this…the tension I think is very interesting. Thank god Annie and I love each other, so it’s a little different than that experience.”
She tweeted upon the U.K. trailer release, “Having a literal mother-off w Anne Hathaway.”
“Mothers’ Instinct” premieres in select theaters July 26 and on Digital August 13 from Neon. Check out the trailer below.
