Houston Director Leans On His Alief Upbringing For the Haunting Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother — Bassam Tariq On His Unconventional Action Movie

The PaperCity Interview

By Alison Medley // Oct 19, 2026

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Bassam Tariq is the Houston proud and UT educated director of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

Mahershala Ali and Bassam Tariq work together on the set of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother brings a distinctly Houston story home.

Mahershala Ali with his sword in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

There are moments in a father’s life when love exposes how little he can protect. Houston-raised filmmaker Bassam Tariq explores that in his haunting new movie Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, which is playing in theaters now.

Tariq grew up in Alief, immersed in Houston’s religious and cultural diversity.

“I grew around Mormons,” he tells PaperCity. “I grew around religious Koreans. I grew up around, you know, very strong-willed Vietnamese Buddhists. Hindus. And I’m Muslim, and it was 9/11.”

Tariq always has been struck by the temples and mosques rising along Houston’s roads, expressions of different faiths and that can be felt throughout Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

“For me, that’s not just the USA. That’s Houston,” he says.

That multicultural upbringing gives resonance to a movie in which a Muslim man’s encounter with grace is witnessed by a Christian pastor.

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Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and also showed at Houston Cinema Arts Festival earlier this month. The reviews have been overwhelming positive with Rolling Stone calling it “Mahershala Ali’s Action Masterpiece.”

“I think the way I see this film is, it’s a samurai film where a man has to kill all the versions of himself to be the father that is necessary,” Tariq says.

Bassam Tariq director Mother Your Mother — Mahershala Ali and Bassam Tariq work together on the set of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

At the film’s center is Latif, a Muslim father played by Ali whose sincere religious convictions coexist with a life shaped by violence. Latif, a devout Muslim hitman in Houston, is thrust into the overwhelming responsibilities of single fatherhood following the sudden death of his wife, leaving him to care for their three children, including a newborn.

Desperate to find breast milk for his infant who cannot tolerate formula, Latif becomes entangled in a violent feud involving his employer and a Christian cult leader, forcing him to navigate the precarious intersection of faith, violence and fatherhood. Drawing its title from an Islamic Hadith emphasizing the sacred importance of mothers, the movie becomes a haunting meditation on grief, moral reckoning and the extraordinary demands of love.

When the consequences of Latif’s actions threaten his family, he must confront the distance between the righteous man he believes himself to be and the man he has become.

Fighting With Grief

In Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Latif opens the refrigerator to find only a dwindling supply of his late wife’s breast milk. Grief becomes an urgent, physical need. He must learn to sustain a life while scarcely knowing how to inhabit his own.

“Grief is something that breaks you, and it challenges your identity of who you think you are,” Tariq says. “Because you thought you were this one thing and this one person, and something has happened that’s catastrophic. And now you have to rethink who you are.”

Inscribed on a sword in the film are the words: “Die before you die.”

“In this life we have to die before we die,” Tariq notes. “Meaning that we have to seek a death of our ego.”

Mahershala Ali with his sword in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

For Latif, that reckoning begins in the distance between the violence he knows and the tenderness his children need.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’s premise was inspired by an intimate memory from 2014, when Tariq became a father.

Living in New York, Tariq was imagining his professional future when his wife developed an infection shortly after giving birth. Their newborn son struggled to feed, leaving Tariq searching for solutions.

Eventually his wife was able to nurse their baby, but the baby remained distressed. During a cab ride home, Tariq took his son into his arms.

“And he finally calmed down and I realize he just needed his dad,” Tariq tells PaperCity. “Like I was never present with him until that moment.”

The revelation was almost unbearably tender. A young father had been doing everything imaginable for his child, only to discover that what his son needed most was simply his presence.

A Movie Resurrection

Near the movie’s conclusion, a moment with the quiet force of a miracle unfolds between two houses. In one mansion, Latif lies wounded and in the other his daughter recites a hadith for for Latif’s safe return. Riddled with bullets, Latif seems to glimpse at his daughter Fatiha across the distance separating them. Latif then inexplicably rises.

Watching Latif’s resurrection from near-death, Pastor Hwan recognizes an echo of his own deliverance, when his mother’s prayers brought him back from death.

“Latif feels like an utter monster at that moment, but then at that moment, he’s blessed with this vision,” Tariq says. “Like you are, you are worthy.”

Houston Cinema Arts Festival 2026 — Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother brings a distinctly Houston story home.

The movie’s miracle is not simply that a man might survive, but that he may discover he has not been abandoned.

“Humans need that miracle in this world,” Tariq tells PaperCity. “I believe that the prayers of others are the reason why we are who we are.”

Witnessing Latif’s rise from apparent death, Pastor Hwan is seemingly awestruck by the recognition of mercy that transcends the boundaries of creed.

“I think we sometimes put religion on such a pedestal, which I think is incorrect,” Tariq says. “We are human and we believe. And we believe in something and we’re making mistakes.

Tariq’s question is whether we can acknowledge someone’s failures without making them a final verdict.

“So, do we not show grace? Do we not see that people can change and grow?” he asks. “What is grace and mercy if it’s not something that requires an amount of faith?”

And you thought this was an action movie?

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is currently playing at a number of Houston movie theaters, including River Oaks Theatre and Cinemark, AMC and Regal theaters.