The Story of Mums: Fertility, Comedy, and Resilience
Mums follows Anna, 40, and Ari, 32—a two-woman couple navigating one of life's most emotionally grueling journeys: assisted reproduction. What begins as a hopeful venture into parenthood becomes something far more complicated, stretching across 116 weeks, 5 embryo transfers, 745 pills, and 67 injections. The documentary doesn't shy away from the scientific machinery of it all, but it refuses to let that machinery define the story. Instead, directors find humor in the absurdity, tenderness in the setbacks, and profound love underneath it all. It's a film that understands something crucial: when the stakes feel impossibly high, you either laugh or you break. Anna and Ari choose to laugh—thick and fast, as the film promises—while inviting viewers into the intimate privacy of their home where the real work happens.
Behind the Making of Mums: Production and Creative Vision
Mums is a co-production between Polar Star Films, Intactes Films, and 3Cat, bringing together European filmmaking expertise to tell a deeply personal story with scope and sensitivity. The 74-minute runtime is precisely calibrated—long enough to honor the emotional weight of the couple's experience, short enough to maintain the documentary's brisk, comedic momentum. Released in 2025, the film arrives at a moment when conversations around fertility, LGBTQ+ parenthood, and reproductive autonomy are increasingly visible in cinema, yet mainstream documentaries tackling this terrain remain rare. The production captures not just clinical moments but the mundane rituals of their lives: morning routines interrupted by injections, conversations over breakfast about test results, the small intimacies that anchor a relationship under stress. By embedding themselves in Anna and Ari's world rather than treating it as a case study, the filmmakers create something that feels lived-in rather than observed from clinical distance.
What Makes Mums Stand Out: Humor as Survival
What's striking about Mums is how it refuses the documentary impulse to be either purely inspirational or purely tragic. There's no triumphant swell of music when things go right, no mournful strings when they don't. Instead, there's Anna and Ari's laughter—sometimes genuine, sometimes desperate, often both at once. The film understands that infertility treatment is absurd in the way that only real life can be: the number of pills (745), the number of injections (67), the sheer repetition of hope and disappointment across 116 weeks. Most documentaries would use those numbers to manipulate emotion. Mums uses them to invite recognition. You've been through something that feels endless? Here's proof that it is. The couple's willingness to be funny about their pain—to crack jokes when the embryo doesn't take, to find absurdity in the medical bureaucracy—gives the film its beating heart. It's not that their struggle is any less real; it's that their refusal to be defined by it feels like the truest form of resistance. Movie OTT tracks where independent documentaries like this land across streaming platforms, and Mums deserves to find an audience beyond the festival circuit because it speaks to something universal hidden inside something very specific: what it means to want something so badly that you'll endure nearly two years of uncertainty, needles, and disappointment for a chance at it.
Where to Stream Mums Online
Mums is currently available on major OTT services, making it accessible to viewers across multiple platforms. Rather than being locked behind a single subscription, the film has found distribution across several streaming homes—a testament to its appeal to both general audiences and those specifically seeking documentaries about fertility and LGBTQ+ experiences. You can check the "Where to Watch" widget at the top of this page to see which platform carries it in your region and subscription bundle. Whether you're a documentary enthusiast, someone navigating fertility questions yourself, or simply looking for a film that's both funny and heartbreaking, the ease of access means there's no excuse not to watch. Movie OTT makes it simple to compare availability across services, so you can start watching today.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Is Mums a true story?
Yes. Mums is a documentary following real people—Anna and Ari—through their actual fertility journey. The 116 weeks, 5 embryo transfers, 745 pills, and 67 injections are all documented facts from their lived experience.
Q: How long is Mums?
The documentary runs 74 minutes, making it a lean, focused watch that captures the emotional arc of the couple's journey without unnecessary padding.
Q: What is Mums about?
Mums documents a same-sex couple's attempt to become pregnant through assisted reproduction, balancing the medical reality of fertility treatment with humor, vulnerability, and the strength of their relationship.
Q: Who directed Mums?
Mums is a co-production from Polar Star Films, Intactes Films, and 3Cat, representing European filmmaking collaboration on an intimate subject.
Q: Is Mums appropriate for all audiences?
While Mums deals with adult themes around fertility and sexuality, its humor and accessibility make it suitable for mature teens and adults. Those personally navigating fertility struggles may find it particularly resonant—or potentially triggering, depending on their own circumstances.
Final Thoughts on Mums
Mums isn't trying to be a grand statement about parenthood or reproductive rights, though it touches both. It's something more modest and more powerful: a portrait of two people who love each other, who want something badly, and who refuse to let the machinery of medicine steal their joy or their humor. You'll laugh. You'll probably tear up. You'll recognize something true about persistence, about partnership, about the strange courage it takes to keep showing up for something that keeps disappointing you. It's a film that understands its subjects completely—not as problems to be solved or inspiration to be mined, but as full human beings navigating an impossible situation with grace, jokes, and each other.