What are we in for with Mother Mary

As we are approaching the end of 2025, it is time to turn our eyes toward 2026, a new time over a new horizon pressing ever toward us (I blame the sun). One of my topmost anticipated films of 2026 is Mother Mary, David Lowery’s new film starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel. It’s about a pop star and a fashion designer with a complicated past, and also maybe they are witches. The trailer dropped yesterday and I am living for it.

I’m a huge fan of Lowery, who made The Green Knight, A Ghost Story, The Old Man & the Gun, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and Pete’s Dragon, among other things. I don’t really care who stars in his films or what they’re about, just tell me David Lowery has a new film, and I am there. But also, if you told me that Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel were co-starring as a pop star and a fashion designer, respectively, with a complicated past and also maybe they are witches, I am there for that, too. And if you put those two things together, David Lowery + Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel co-starring together as a pop star and a fashion designer, respectively, who are also maybe witches, I am there so fast I will leave burn marks in my wake. I cannot WAIT for this film. 

Of course, it looks amazing, because Lowery doesn’t f-ck around with his visuals. And I expect the original music to be good, too, coming as it does from Charli XCX and Jack Antonoff (more excited for Charli, to be honest). The film also co-stars Hunter Schafer, with whom I am obsessed—that FACE—Kaia Gerber, Jessica Brown Findlay, FKA Twigs, Fleabag star Sian Clifford, and Alba Baptista. That’s a solid supporting cast, though I expect those roles to be small, as the film is supposedly a two-hander between Hathaway and Coel. 

That said, I expect this to be a difficult film. It’s certainly had a difficult production and post-production period. Mother Mary began filming in 2023 but was slowed by the dual labor strikes, though they obtained a waiver to continue working that summer. They also hopped through multiple countries and filming locations, even though most of the film is described as happening in a barn. The film finally wrapped in summer 2024, and it is now being released almost two full years after that, a length of time that suggests some struggle deciding when and how to release it. (The film comes from indie distributor A24.)

I am always going to give Lowery the benefit of the doubt, but in 2024 he showed up at the Melbourne International Film Festival and called Mother Mary a “weird, weird film”. Then, on the podcast The Last Video Store, Lowery told host Alexei Toliopoulos, “I know what I set out to make and that is indeed what I’ve made, but it is so wild. It is a movie I am sure will provoke a lot of strong feelings, in every possible direction.”

That sounds about right for David Lowery’s films, which are usually a matter of very individual tastes. Only a couple of his films are widely appealing (Pete’s Dragon and The Old Man & the Gun, both of which star Robert Redford). He’s just not a filmmaker who makes commercial fare. Still, when a filmmaker like Lowery sounds mystified by his own work, I do wonder what we’re in for. I’m into it whatever it is, he’s earned my trust, but you never know how deep the water is until you’re in it, you know? What are we getting into with Mother Mary?