Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
Landmark Ritz Five
214 Walnut St.
Philadelphia
Oct. 27, 2026
In his stellar book Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz And Black Internationalism, Richard Brent Turner presents a compelling history of Islam’s influence on the African American community. By analyzing the ways in which Islam has shaped Black music and politics, the book frames both jazz and the civil rights movement as products of faith working in concert with music and protest. Turner explains that Islam not only reformed the Black community’s outlook on spirituality; it fueled the struggle against racism and oppression at home and abroad. African American Islam and jazz shared parallel goals and values of Black affirmation, freedom and self-determination. Black followers of Islam and jazz musicians expressed these by rejecting systemic racism, constructing Black notions of masculinity and developing a sense of African American religious internationalism. Historically, Islam’s influence on African American life does not end in the realm of politics and culture. For Black muslims throughout this country, Islam offers a path toward a total reformation of the self. Beset by the moral and psychological challenges of being Black in America, Black muslims have used the religion as both a sword and shield of sorts.
Writer/Director Basaam Tariq’s latest film Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother tells a story centered around a Black muslim hitman’s struggles with fatherhood and morality in a deeply immoral world. Starring Mahershala Ali as Latif, the film beautifully contrasts the peace and profundity of spiritual practice with the violence, chaos and uncertainty of the human experience. After his wife, Khadijah (played by Shakirah DeMesier) dies, Latif finds himself the single father of a teenaged daughter Fatiha (Adia), a middle school aged son Qadir (Jahleel Kamara) and an infant daughter, Aziza (played by Brooklyn and Jaxon Hughes). In addition to the weight of Latif’s decision to walk away from paid assassination work, Khadijah’s death raises the stakes even further. Aziza can’t drink formula and must be breastfed. Without a mother in the home to nourish the child, Latif is forced to navigate a cold and unmerciful set of bureaucratic hurdles at breastmilk banks, clinics and doctor’s offices, just to ensure that his young child doesn’t starve to death. While dealing with all of this, Latif is approached by Mike (Laith Nakli), his employer and a powerful underworld boss. Mike’s nephew Hatty (Abubakr Ali) is a pornographer who has been targeted and marked for death by a war veteran-turned religious cult leader named Hwan Yoon (John Cho). Mike demands that Latif assassinate Hwan and although he refuses, Latif and Hwan seem destined to collide eventually. Despite this, Latif tries to stick with the path of peace. It is only when Hwan raids a local mosque and kills Latif’s imam Abdul Malik (Giancarlo Esposito) that Latif chooses the path of violence. Hwan knows that Mike has tried to contract Latif to kill him and Latif knows that Hwan will never leave him and his family alone.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is a bold and bloody action thriller undergirded with a palpable message about the power of faith. Ali is radiant in his performance as a Black man who is trying his best to protect both his family and his relationship with God in the face of the most dire circumstances. Cho is outstanding in his portrayal of a violent religious extremist and Ali and Aida’s relationship is the film’s true heart as the father and daughter dynamic swings between bitter contention and sweet tenderness. A deep and thrilling look at Islam through the eyes of Black muslims, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is one of the best films of 2026.
