China / Poland | 2025 | 92′ | Color
Festivals:
IDFA 2025 (Envision Competition)
About the film:
After seven years abroad in Poland, Chinese filmmaker Mo Tan returns home for the Lunar New Year, only to be drawn back into the emotional pull of her family. When a fortune teller warns that a mole on her face will bring misfortune, her parents insist she have it removed. Mo refuses, but their fixation, compounded by a fractured family dynamic and her own unraveling relationship, begins to push her to the brink. A breast cancer diagnosis forces her to confront both her mortality and the unsettling possibility that fate might be real.
Blending raw documentary intimacy with stop-motion animations and a tragicomic tone, Confessions of a Mole explores tradition, illness, and the generational wounds that echo through families. It’s a story of a family struggling to reconnect, make sense of the past, and rediscover love in the long shadow of trauma.
Director’s statement:
Caught Between Two Worlds: The identity labels often used in China, such as “over-age leftover women,” “single dogs,” and “boomerang kids”, threw me into cultural conflict when I returned from Poland. After living there for seven years, I spent my first Chinese New Year back home with my family. During this visit, my mother asked me to remove a mole beneath my eye. According to traditional Chinese physiognomy, this mole signifies that a woman will have bad luck in intimate relationships. Hearing this left me confused and unsettled. I had just gone through a breakup and was already filled with doubts about myself—my personality, and why I had never been able to maintain a long-term relationship. Confronted by these questions, I picked up my camera in search of answers, hoping to understand why I have often played the role of an emotionally fragile “killer” in my relationships.
The Possibility of Coexistence: This film arises from observing intimate relationships, family dynamics, and generational tensions, exploring the possibilities of coexistence and dialogue. Polarization is often discussed in global politics and in social issues like gender, cultural, and racial divisions, but it quietly permeates our intimate and familial bonds, often without our awareness. In my own family, we unconsciously transform the traumas we experience into chasms that separate relatives and lovers alike. Making this film has been a process of revisiting and reflecting on the past. In a world increasingly divided, I seek within the smallest social unit—the family, a space for dialogue, for connection, and for rediscovering love. This film is ultimately about finding new ways to reconnect, to heal, and to imagine the possibilities of love in its many forms.
A Cinematic Essay: Pushing the Boundaries: Stylistically, the film adopts the methods of Caméra-Stylo and the cinematic essay. My voiceover monologue offers access to my inner world, while stop-motion animation depicts the fantasies and fears that haunt my imagination. Visually, I focus on capturing spontaneous emotions and subtle interpersonal exchanges. The tone is comic, sometimes even caricature-like. Yet, as both filmmaker and cinematographer, I am far from an impartial observer. I question the characters, and when the camera turns back on me, my own vulnerabilities and contradictions are revealed. The camera acts as both witness and blade, revealing what is hidden yet deepening what is raw. Through this dual role of the camera, the ways in which the film pushes the boundaries of cinematic language are open to question, and I have not hidden this in the work. In this sense, this is a self-portrait film—a mirror reflecting the person behind the camera: who I am, where I come from, and where I’m going.
About the director:
Born in China and currently based in Warsaw, Mo Tan graduated in 2018 from the Directing Department of the Lodz Film School. Even in her early student works, the tension between humanity’s primal instincts and the constructs of civilization emerged as a central theme in her artistic exploration. In her creative practice, documentary and narrative filmmaking have long served as mutually enriching modes of expression. Her work consistently explores cultural clashes and human dilemmas, employing an observant lens and a deep philosophical inquiry to continually push the boundaries of cinematic storytelling.
Filmography:
2025: Confessions of a Mole (feature documentary)
2018: Licentia Poetica (short fiction)
2017: Insomnia (short documentary)
2017: Kamienne chleby (short fiction)
2016: Woo (short fiction)
2013: Cactus (short documentary)
2013: Piotrusiu (short fiction)
Press Quotes:
– Warsaw-based Chinese filmmaker Mo Tan pushes the boundaries of personal documentary with her feature debut. Cineuropa
– Cleverly, Mo turns this mole into a metaphor for her life and social position. Business Doc Review