Critically acclaimed thriller “Mother” tells the story about a mentally challenged man who is framed for murder and his distraught mother scrambling to clear the false charge against her son by tracking down the real murderer on her own.

Here’s the plot. In a small, remote provincial town, a widow lives with her only son Do-jun, a shy and quite young man who has limited mental abilities. Known only as “mother,” the woman makes her living by selling herbs and giving illicit acupuncture treatments to her neighbors so she can support her 28-year-old, mentally disabled son. One day, a teenage girl in the neighborhood is murdered, and Do-jun becomes the prime suspect. The police, eager to wrap up the case quickly, arrest Do-jun, citing a golf ball with his name scrawled on it found near the body and witness testimony that he had been drunk and following the victim on the night of the murder. The mother is convinced that her son, an infantile man who curls up next to her at night, is innocent. But his defense attorney turns out to be insincere and incompetent. Distrustful of the unreliable police and lawyers, the mother sets out to catch the murderer herself to prove her son’s innocence. As she digs deeper into the case, however, things turn out to be much more complex than she thought. She goes to extreme lengths to save her son, only to come across a bizarre, shocking twist.

The story itself seems a typical depiction of a devoted mom’s love for her son. But the film explores more than one dimension of motherhood, revealing a distorted portrait of blind love and subsequent madness. The duality of motherhood, in combination with suspense, dark humor and emotional complexities, distinguishes this psycho-thriller from other films about maternal love.

Veteran actress Kim Hye-ja received rave reviews for her hardboiled role of a feverishly dedicated mother willing to go to any lengths for her son. Her impressive performance led to her win numerous awards internationally, including the best actress award at the 2009 Asian Pacific Screen Awards in Queensland, Australia and the same title at the China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival the same year. In December 2010, she was also named best actress by the Los Angeles Critics Association, an influential group of American films critics.

Praised by Variety magazine as “an engrossing portrait of a feisty Korean widow” that was “unjustly denied a competition berth at Cannes,” this film was featured in the non-competitive Un Certain Regard section of the 62nd edition of the Cannes Film Festival in May 2009. “Mother” was also selected as one of the top ten movies of 2010 by the Wall Street Journal.