‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ Star Mahershala Ali Says It Can Be “Dangerous That People End Up Believing Their Own Righteousness” — Contenders L.A.

Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is a complex action movie that interweaves religion at its center.

The film stars Mahershala Ali as Latif, a staunch Muslim and father of three, including an infant. Latif is employed as a contract killer, who after the death of his wife struggles to reconcile his faith with his seedy work. However, as he tries to distance himself from it, he finds himself pulled into his longtime employer’s violent battle with a religious extremist group led by a viral preacher played by John Cho.

At Deadline’s Contenders Film Los Angeles event on Saturday, Tariq alongside Ali, Cho and Son Lux band member Rafiq Bhatia spoke about making the unique project.

Tariq revealed that the film was inspired by a scary incident experienced by his wife soon after giving birth to their son. “Two days [after giving birth] she had an infection and was sent to the emergency room unconscious. And we didn’t know if my wife was going to make it, and at the same time my son needed breastmilk because he was not taking any formula,” he explained. “He was vomiting it out, and I couldn’t get in touch with her because she wasn’t able to communicate. So, I strapped him on me, and started looking for breast milk around New York City. Thank God my wife was well enough to nurse him back to health.”

He continued, “But my son was really, really fussy and I remember on the cab ride back, he was still crying and I felt like such a failure as a dad. I just remember taking him out of the car seat and he’s still crying and I held him close to me and he finally calms down and I realized he just needed me to be a dad. I was trying to do all these other things, try to fill these other things, try to fill these impossible shoes of the mother and I just needed to be me.”

Though foes on different ends of the religious spectrum, Latif being devout but more forgiving, Cho’s Hwan Yoon is devout but intolerant. But both are equally matched in the area of combat and violence. In reconciling with his character on the page Ali said, “I think what can be dangerous about religion is how people interpret it. It naturally is making an argument, the faith itself, like this is the right point of view of the world. So, then if you have something that gives you such confidence around being correct, but then perhaps you have an incorrect interpretation of it.”

Ali added, “What can be dangerous is that people sort of end up believing in their own righteousness, so to speak. So, I think my character believes deeply in what he is doing and in his interpretation of what he’s doing. And I think there’s some real similarities between John’s character …one of us is humbled and one of us is uplifted by somewhat of a miracle that takes place during the course of the story.”

Like Ali, Cho gets some equally gnarly action scenes. In Cho’s case, his role is a little more sadistic and unhinged as a pastor aiming to purge the world of what he deems as lewd through any means necessary. “It was a group effort [to get this character right],” Cho said. “But I wanted to be in this movie. And frankly, I was a little worried that I would be a distraction. I didn’t want to be Harold and Kumar on the screen and distract people from this story. But most of my work was with these two gentlemen to my left and right [Ali and Tariq]. It was a process of getting into a room with them and [being vulnerable with each other]. That made me feel as though I could get rid of the artifice and start in an honest place.”