Back in June, we released No Country for Mothers with nothing behind it but a group of moms and allies who decided they were done being invisible and put up the money themselves to get this story told.
Since then, thousands of moms and supporters have come together to watch the film in living rooms, backyards, theaters, libraries, churches, and community centers across the country. With nearly a 1,000 watch parties already on the books, it quickly became the largest community-led documentary rollout ever in the US. None of that happened because a studio funded it. It happened because moms decided it was worth doing themselves.
But here’s what keeps happening at these screenings that I find so incredible: After the credits roll and the lights come up, nobody grabs for their stuff to head out. Moms start talking, about pickup schedules that never line up with their workday, about going back to the office six weeks postpartum, about the exhaustion they just watched onscreen but never had language for. And the same question often surfaces: what can we actually do to change this?
I know what people expect me to say next. Get loud. Call your senator, start a protest, stage a walkout. That instinct isn’t naive, and it isn’t wrong. The fury underneath it is earned.
But here’s my answer: go get other moms and supporters in your life to host a watch party of their own. Not just attend one, host one. Turn your friend group, your bookclub, your neighborhood moms’ chat into a room like ours.
Policy doesn’t shift because a few thousand of us are furious enough to demand it. It shifts once an issue becomes undeniable enough that no candidate, in either party, can afford to pretend they don’t see it. And undeniable is a cultural threshold before it’s ever a legislative one. Hosting your own watch party isn’t a smaller version of the fight. It’s an earlier one, even if it doesn’t feel as satisfying as yelling into a microphone.
What We Actually Mean by Culture
I use that word “culture” a lot, and I want to be specific. I mean the shows we put on after the kids go to bed. The movies we quote for years. The news headlines we read every day. The stuff that shows up in our feeds so often it starts to feel like just how things are.
The average American adult now spends over 13 hours a day consuming media. That’s not background noise, that’s where people’s attention actually lives. If a story about motherhood never shows up there, it doesn’t exist in the place where most Americans are forming their opinions about what’s normal.
That’s the theory behind everything we’re doing with this film. You don’t win people over with a policy memo. You win them over with a story they can’t stop thinking about.
Why the Oscars
Which brings me to award season, one of the few nights a year where a huge swath of the country is watching the same handful of stories at once, deciding together which ones mattered.
Every awards season, winners thank their moms onstage. For showing up and believing in them first. It’s always moving, but it’s never actually her story. It’s one line in someone else’s speech.
Real mothers, the ones raising kids in this country right now, deserve the story itself, told the way we tell it in No Country for Mothers. That’s why we’re asking the Academy to recognize our kind of story, not just the mother standing behind whoever wins.
If culture is where the country decides what’s normal, awards season is one of its loudest microphones, and we want real motherhood at the center of it.
What Moms Are Actually Living
Childcare that costs more than a mortgage. A workday that ends at five when school pickup is at three. Going back to work two weeks after childbirth because there’s no paid leave. None of that is a mother failing to manage her schedule. That’s a country that never built real support for families. They just handed mothers the bill, and are expecting her to carry it quietly.
That’s the piece we’re actually fighting to change, and it’s why none of this is about a trophy. It’s about bringing what mothers are carrying to the foreground and into the center of the room, somewhere nobody gets to look away and no politician gets to wave it off. Every piece of this, the screenings, the recognition we’re asking for from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is aimed at the same target: enough public intensity that culture moves first, so policy has no room left to avoid following it.
So here’s the actual ask. Sign the petition to ask the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to finally acknowledge the stories of real moms. Then, don’t just attend a screening, host one yourself. Get the moms and supporters in your life to do the same.
This isn’t a one-time favor. It’s the next link in a chain we’ve been building since we founded Moms First in 2022, and it’s how we keep generating the pressure this whole fight depends on. We’re not asking you to do less than you want to do. We’re asking you to start here.
Hosting a Screening With Your School Community
It’s been two weeks and you already got the call from school: strep throat, come pick up. There’s a SignUpGenius for field trip chaperones sitting unanswered in your inbox. And the travel soccer tournament fee costs more than your first car did.
You are not alone in this, even when it feels like it. So many of you have told us you’d love to bring a screening of No Country for Mothers to your school community, your PTA, your team parents, your dance moms, but weren’t sure how to bring it up to them.
Next week, we’re dropping a brand new hosting toolkit built to help you do exactly that.
Complete this Screening Host Interest Form and we’ll make sure you’re first in line when the toolkit drops.
Tu historia, tu idioma (Your Story, Your Language)
Motherhood doesn’t look the same for everyone, and neither should the way we tell its story. This Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re proud to share that No Country for Mothers includes Spanish subtitles, so Latina mothers and families can experience the film fully, in the language that speaks to them most.
Reúne a tus amigas mamás, a tu madre, a tus colegas, y organiza una función para ver la película en comunidad.
In addition to Spanish subtitles, No Country for Mothers is available in Chinese, French and Portuguese. Need subtitles translated in another language? Email us at hello@momsfirst.us and we’d be happy to help.
Moms First x Planned Parenthood: Free Screening in NYC
Moms First, in collaboration with Planned Parenthood, is hosting a special screening of No Country for Mothers on Thursday, September 24, 6-7:45 PM ET at Cinema Village in New York City. Register today while seats are still available.
Stick around after the film for a conversation with Moms First CMO Deborah Singer and Planned Parenthood Vice President Stephanie Ogorzalek.
No Country for Mothers: Screenings Happening Near You
Check for a local screening in your city or join a virtual watch party.
- Virtual Watch Party (Harrison, NY), Sept 18, 6-7 AM — RSVP
- Whitefish Bay, WI, Sept 18, 11AM-1 PM — RSVP
- Chicago, IL, Sept 18, 6-9 PM at Fit & Fun Gym & Club — RSVP
- Sewickley, PA, Sept 19, 1:15-2:30 PM at The Lindsay Theater — RSVP
- Virtual Watch Party (Harrison, NY), Sept 19, 2-3:30 PM — RSVP
- Shrewsbury, MA, Sept 19, 2-4:30 PM — RSVP
- Jacksonville, IL, Sept 19, 7-9 PM — RSVP
- Palm Springs, CA, Sept 19, 11:30 AM-2 PM at Festival Theaters Palm Springs — RSVP
- Naples, FL, Sept 19, 4:30-6:30 PM — RSVP
- Virtual Watch Party (Harrison, NY), Sept 20, 8-10 PM — RSVP
- Virtual Watch Party (Harrison, NY), Sept 22, 12:30-1:45 PM — RSVP
- New York, NY, Sept 22, 4-7 PM at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health — RSVP
- Yarmouth, ME, Sept 22, 6:30-8:30 PM at First Parish Congregational Church — RSVP
- Virtual Watch Party (Harrison, NY), Sept 23, 9:30-10:30 AM — RSVP
- Kingston, NY, Sept 23, 5-8PM at Upstate Films — RSVP
- Sewickley, PA, Sept 23, 6:30-8 PM at The Lindsay Theater — RSVP
- Yarmouth, ME, Sept 23, 6:30-8:30 PM at First Parish Congregational Church — RSVP
- New York, NY, Sept 24 10-11:30 AM at Nori — RSVP
- Chicago, IL, Sept 24, 7-9 PM at Le Village Cowork Irving Park — RSVP
- Virtual Watch Party (Harrison, NY), Sept 24, 8:30-10:30 AM — RSVP
Want to host your own? Watch parties can be in your backyard, living room, a local library, your church, movie theater, or wherever moms gather. Help bring moms together in community to talk, watch, and support one another.
Head to our Host Hub for all the info you need to set up your event.
Culture is how we get Hollywood, and everyone else, to finally see what mothers are actually carrying, and it’s how we build the kind of intensity that policy eventually has no choice but to follow.
Until moms are at the front of the stage,
