Wanting to demonstrate the courage in vulnerability and the strength in speaking one’s truth, a young mother, newly diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, writes her daughter a letter to help her navigate an uncertain future.

Mixing observational documentary with personal essay, love, amma is, on the surface, an intimate story of one family’s journey to healing. But on a deeper level, it is a courageous and candid attempt to depict mental illness from a new angle—through rarely seen moments along the path to acceptance.

After being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a young mother writes a letter to her daughter about their family’s collective journey to acceptance.

They say a mother’s love for her child is as unshakable as the rocky cliffs that hold back the sea—even when the tumultuous waves of mental illness come crashing.

Wanting to demonstrate the courage in vulnerability and the strength in speaking one’s truth, a young mother, newly diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, writes her daughter a letter to help her navigate an uncertain future.

In this intergenerational film, writer and director Prajwala Dixit documents her family’s collective journey to acceptance, and the difficult conversations that take place along the way.

In contemplative scenes that travel between the brooding, windswept coastline of St. John’s in Canada and the vibrant, bustling metropolis of Bengaluru in India, Prajwala, speaking in her native language of Kannada, worries about what the future may bring, but also finds hope in what will never change: her love for her daughter.

Interspersed between these contrasting visual scapes and solitary moments of inward reflection are Prajwala’s individual heart-to-heart exchanges with those she loves most. Daughter, mother, husband and grandmother. Prajwala’s resolve to break her family’s intergenerational cycle of silence and suffering is the driving force that helps them safely find their way through this unfamiliar and disorienting terrain.

Mixing observational documentary with personal essay, love, amma is, on the surface, an intimate story of one family’s quest for healing. But on a deeper level, it is a courageous and candid attempt to depict mental illness from a new angle—through rarely seen moments along the path to acceptance.

In love, amma, the landscapes and cityscapes of India and Canada have been interwoven and offer the audience a unique peek into your mental illness. How was this sense of landscape an important part of the telling of this story?

St. John’s in Canada and Bengaluru in India are rich and vibrant places that, upon first contact, stimulate the senses. One is defined by the waters and the other is landlocked. This made for an interesting and contrasting visual scape that also spoke to my lived experience in both spaces. I felt a sense of openness in who I was becoming in St. John’s, and the film reflects this in the vastness of land and seascapes the city has to offer. I have felt a sense of constriction about who I could be in Bengaluru, which I have attempted to reflect through the conversations happening inside closed doors.

It was important to me that the film not be prescriptive about what borderline personality disorder (BPD) feels like (to me). Rather, I’ve attempted to embed what has been a constant in my life into the narrative’s subconscious. Using natural elements in the environments I call home, like the ocean, the island, cliffs and traffic, I not only captured visuals that communicate what underlines BPD (like suicidal ideation and chronic fears of abandonment) but also attempted to show what other mental health problems, mental illnesses and invisible disabilities may feel like. The isolation of an island, the persistent noise of traffic, the crashing waves of the ocean and the precipice of a cliff all portray what BPD feels like to me.

Why did you choose to structure the film as a letter to your daughter?

During the outbreak of the raging pandemic, the diagnosis of BPD hit my family and me like a loud slap that leaves the ears ringing for many moments to follow. We found ourselves disoriented, grappling with something that none of us was familiar with and also not having enough tools to navigate this journey. It didn’t help that what is available in the public domain often paints people with BPD as terrible individuals, incapable of everyday existence. I knew this wasn’t true, and this solidified as fact when I began interacting with those who lived with this disorder in Canada and India. These were everyday people like me and not the kind that popular culture and mainstream media continue to portray.

Like many, I also sensed that the pandemic would be a reckoning for the world in regards to the environment and mental health, and all these elements catalyzed me to focus my energies as I embarked on the lifelong journey of healing; to capture intimate, private moments that would showcase what the path to acceptance of mental illness, post diagnosis, looked like within my family.

This film is very personal. To draw the strength to make this film has meant going inward and understanding why it was important to showcase such a private matter on a public platform. From the conversations that began inside the mental health institution in St. John’s, it became clear that I wanted to communicate to my daughter, through the means of this film, a very difficult and turbulent time in our life. It crystallized early on that I wanted to show her the courage in vulnerability and the strength in speaking one’s truth. And so, organically, it became so that this film would be structured as a letter from the present me to the future her.

Your voice narrates in Kannada while most of the conversations happen in English. What was it like to weave two languages together into the film? Why was this important?

Languages convey more than words. They are one of our first tangible inheritances in this world. Kannada came into my life while I grew in my mother’s womb, and English when I was about two or so. Alongside wanting to showcase a beautiful and old Dravidian South Indian language like Kannada and its existence and presence in Canada, I wanted to create an intimate tone for the film through the letter I had penned for my daughter. Kannada offered this in an inexplicable way. Not because it is better or worse than English but, perhaps, because it is a tangible form of legacy and love that my family shares, despite being in different parts of the world.

It has been interesting to see how my mother and I, unconsciously, used English during difficult conversations, a departure from the norm, as most of our conversations happen in Kannada.

The use of the two languages also speaks to the duality of two worlds in my life as an immigrant from India living in Canada, and the feeling of sometimes belonging to both worlds and sometimes to none. This theme often emerges in my work as a journalist, documentary filmmaker, playwright and author, where I try to create a space for the two worlds to become one.

There is a particularly difficult moment in the film where your mother says: “Even now I am not sure why they call it a disorder.” What do you want people to understand about individuals and families living with borderline personality disorder through this film?

It was difficult to film the conversation with my mother, partly because such discussions rarely took place in our home. For her to admit that her child, her baby, was ailing mentally, felt to her like admitting she was an irresponsible parent, which isn’t the case. Society is much harder on women, especially women of her generation in India, who were responsibilized and guilted for working inside and outside the house. She took it to be her fault, something lacking in her as a mother, and responded from that space for many months. It has taken her a large part of a year to come to terms with my diagnosis of BPD and to understand her true culpability, if any.

Borderline personality disorder is complex, like any mental health problem and mental illness. I am no expert, only speaking from personal research and lived experience, and have found that no two people with BPD are the same, just like no two people with diabetes, anxiety or physical disabilities are the same. I like to view it as a spectrum, and based on social support, the socio-cultural environment and genetics, it manifests differently. The journey is arduous and can take a toll on familial and marital relationships, but with love, care, patience, determination and encouragement, the right medical team and the basics of a healthy diet, exercise and sleep, it is manageable like any other illness. Sadly, not all of this is accessible to everyone, and it is here where empathetic social, economic and healthcare systems can offer support.

BPD isn’t a finality, nor is it the all-encompassing factor in life. On some days it seems that there isn’t an end to the crashing waves, but truly, in the grand scheme of things, like the island I live on, the waves are inherent in who we are. Today, I understand that it is something that offers me a unique perspective in life, fuelling my passion for it. It makes me who I am. And this I am happy about.

How did making this film change your and your family’s perspective on mental health and mental illnesses?

In my experience, growing up in India, what I saw around me was that there wasn’t a safe space inside or outside the home to have difficult conversations around subjects like mental health and wellness. I inherited the attitudes of seeing mental health issues and mental illnesses as something distant, as ‘madness’ and as ‘first-world’ problems. This film has been immense in catalyzing difficult conversations, intergenerationally, within my family, and allowing us to all embark together and individually on the path to healing and growth. Suddenly, the walls that were built have melted and warmth has enveloped us. Different generations of my family came together to make this film, keeping in mind to break our intergenerational suffering and change what the youngest, my daughter, would inherit in regards to her attitudes towards mental health and wellness.

How do you think the conversation around mental health is different or the same in Canada and in India?

According to the World Health Organisation, “every year, more people die as a result of suicide than HIV, malaria or breast cancer—or war and homicide.” Every 40 seconds, a person ends their life by suicide, and for each suicide there are more than 20 attempts. The suffering and tragedy are, sadly, common. Yet, in many ways, the taboos, toxic social and work environments, and passive-aggressive, subversive and microaggressive ostracization in mental health matters pervade globally. While there is relatively more acceptance of mood disorders, like anxiety and depression, in Canada, the conversations continue to be shrouded in secrecy in both spaces, at differing levels. Post pandemic, a more robust dialogue has begun in India and Canada, and it remains to be seen how it unfolds into actions.

What do you hope the audience that watches this film takes away from this? And who is this film meant to be for?

The intent for anyone watching this film is that they leave with hope in their hearts (and a chuckle at the very end of the credits!). Hope that blossoms as fresh flowers in spring. Hope that flutters in the heart before making a wish while blowing out the candles on the birthday cake.

I truly think that anyone 14 and over would find something that speaks to them in the film, especially in the context of destigmatizing conversations around mental health. But, in my heart, I feel this one is for mothers—mine and yours.