FutuRéale Magazine

Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is North America's largest documentary festival. Each year, the festival presents a selection of more than 100 cutting-edge documentaries from Canada and around the globe. Through its industry programmes, the Festival also provides a full range of professional development, market and networking opportunities for documentary professionals.

My Mother’s Garden
Screening: Monday April 21 @9:15pm Al Green Theatre & Wednesday April 23@1:30 pm Cumberland
Reviewed By: Deepi Harish

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure; this quote really does do justice to the documentary of Eugenia Lester, a woman suffering from a penetrating case of Compulsive Hoarding Disorder. This disorder involves the obsessive urge to accumulate items that appear to have no value; the belief that these items are a piece of themselves; throwing such items away are equal to throwing away bits of themselves. The film shadows a mother of three, living in California, consumed in her own grime, a world of mental disarray and chaotic ugliness.

Filmed by Cynthia Lester, the concerned daughter plots to reunite herself with her three brothers to better their mother’s living conditions which have reached the point of seriously needed intervention. One aspect of concern is that Eugenia can’t help but jam heaps of garbage into every crevice of her home; with the volume of cluttered possessions now spewing into the exterior. Threatened by courts to change her way of living, along with dealing with a collection of neighbours petitioning to have her removed from the vicinity, is another.

Eugenia’s four kids trace back to their childhood, giving viewers a glimpse into coexisting with a mother who carries this specific hoarding behaviour. “We didn’t have normal things growing up like a desk or pencils, instead my mom just collected whatever was on sale, and this house started piling up in our bedrooms to the point where I was sleeping on a sleeping bag in our living room,” claims Cynthia. Pushed out of their own home, due to the snowballing effect of their mother’s acute habit of collecting rubbish, the four were forced to leave home at very young ages and turn to indecent behaviours as a result, to make ends meet, financially.

Eugenia’s passion for ‘dumpster diving’ was done with good intentions; to sell it, to give it away, to donate it, to save it for her children or her children’s children, however it just never stopped.

With this film Cynthia leads viewers into the private quarters of her mother’s dwelling, a place Eugenia herself was embarrassed to unmask, even to her own children.

My Mother’s Garden reveals the mind of a deranged woman and her distracted relationship with her children whom try effort fully to help their mother literally ‘let go’ of her backlog of crap. A legion of infelicitous occurrences follow, as Eugenia’s love for her trash trounces the love she carries for her children.