Amanda Deering Jones directs Little Mother Lies with a quiet fury, and Kitty Edwinson’s script slices through the silence like a rusted blade. It’s a short film, but it doesn’t feel small. It’s a pressure cooker of family, addiction, and inherited ghosts, all simmering over a bowl of borscht.

The setup is deceptively simple: one evening, one house, two sisters. Dorie (Pascale Roger-McKeever) is a mother on the edge, trying to keep her son Owen (Elliott Thomas West) alive as he writhes through withdrawal behind a locked door. Marinka (Emilie Talbot), the sister she left behind, still lives in the childhood home, still drinks, still clings to the past like it’s a velvet curtain she can hide behind.

Dinner is served. Only Dorie eats. Marinka drinks. And the air thickens with everything they haven’t said. Owen, meanwhile, is searching for a way out—finding a key tucked inside a set of nesting dolls, a quiet metaphor for the layers of history he’s trapped inside.

The film is steeped in red and black—colors that evoke the aristocratic lineage these women carry like a curse. It’s not just aesthetic; it’s emotional architecture. The red is blood, legacy, rage. The black is denial, silence, the locked room where Owen waits.

Edwinson’s script doesn’t preach. It observes. Two sisters: one trying to break the cycle, the other numbing herself to it. Their clash is inevitable, but it’s not loud. It’s slow, aching, like watching a dam crack.

This is a proof of concept for a larger feature, Mother Lies, and you can feel the depth waiting to be explored. But even in its short form, Little Mother Lies hits hard. It’s about the kind of love that hurts, the kind of family that traps, and the kind of truth that only comes out when everything else has failed.

Watch it if you’ve ever tried to outrun your past. Or if you’ve ever had dinner with someone who still lives in it.

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