The Most Beautiful Movie About Motherhood & Immigration

Crying on planes, a breath-taking onscreen portrayal of the immigrant experience, jet-lagged movie-watching of “Past Lives” & multilingual "Bluey"

I have a terrible habit of watching sad movies on long flights. A couple of years ago, when I flew London to New York for the first time since Covid began, coincidentally the first day international flights to NY started up again, I watched the beautiful film with Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy, Together. Sitting between two youngish men on the packed plane, elbow to elbow, I sipped ginger ale and cried my eyes out for at least two hours.

We recently flew to Canada from London and although I was planning to work the entire eight-hour flight, sitting beside young children is not exactly conducive to the focus I need for writing. Just one film, I told myself and predictably, picked the saddest film I could find. Those sappy trailers get me every single time. Plus, there is a catharsis like no other when you’re sobbing 35,000 feet in the air. (FYI: I just googled, “how high do airplanes fly?”). It was a movie I had never heard of before, and only after watching, I realized it was a Canadian production. I have not stopped thinking about this movie, with its perfectly unhurried tempo and striking cinematography since.