BECOMING MONA

The Netherlands

Directors: Sabine Lubbe Bakker, Niels van Koevorden

Cast: Tanya Zabarylo, Valentijn Dhaenens, Tom Vermeir, Wine Dierickx

Genre: Drama

93 minutes: Dutch with English subtitles (2020)

Life is what happens when you stop living someone else’s and start living your own.  An emotionally-charged tragicomic journey of courage, forgiveness and self-discovery, BECOMING MONA tells a story in three parts of Mona’s struggle to break free from the stifling constraints of a life lived in service of other people’s egos.   When her mother dies in a car accident, Mona is only nine years old.  When her father gets a new girlfriend Mona does everything she can to make the new family work, despite the bullying she experiences.  Even in adulthood, everyone walks over Mona…until one day she realizes that this cannot go on….

BECOMING MONA is about where responsibility ends and guilt begins. About secrets and solitude. About loss and silence. It’s about daring to save yourself and wondering if that’s even possible. Finally, it’s about love and resilience, because, in the end, that’s all we have, or almost all we have.

Based on the bestselling eponymous novel by Griet Op De Beeck.

‘Mona tries to survive in a world full of ego trippers, often at the expense of herself’ 
Tijmen Govaerts, Muidhond

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