All the Single Mothers!

Just in time for Mother’s Day, a celebration of cinema’s iconic and indominitable—if sometimes far from infallible—single moms. Powerhouse performances abound here, including Yumeji Tsukioka as tanka poet Fumiko Nakajō in Kinuyo Tanaka’s Forever a Woman, an unsinkable Ellen Burstyn in the title role of Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Jodie Foster showing courage under fire (and in the face of Jared Leto’s cornrows) in David Fincher’s Panic Room, and Kim Hye-ja’s arguably somewhat too doting matriarch in Bong Joon-ho’s Mother. Some are admirable in their superhuman endurance, others perhaps blinkered by their unconditional love, but you can’t claim there’s a single pushover in the whole bunch.