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Baby Bird follows Helen, an American-born Chinese nanny working for a Chinese family, who has recently suffered the loss of her mother. Her life revolves around her young ward, Xiao Shao, a lonely boy and the only bright spot in her life, whose habit of running away from school she enables behind his mother’s back.

One day, Helen finds a collection of old Chinese workbooks in her late mother’s things, showing how Helen had drawn away from learning Mandarin as a child. Helen realizes that the only memento of her that her mother had chosen to keep was the evidence of her failing to be fluent in her mother tongue, leading her to become consumed by the idea that her mother had secretly resented her.

Hurt and confused, Helen begins to lose sight of the person her mother truly was and, in her memories, starts to see her as a colder, crueller—and, eventually, more violent—version of herself. At the same time, her position within the household and in the eyes of Xiao Shao’s mother grows tenuous, putting her relationship with Xiao Shao at risk.

Baby Bird’s central ethos is to explore second-generation immigrant experiences through horror and to break from the expectation that stories about Asian diaspora identity cannot also be genre pieces. It is a film that balks against rationalization and puts us face-to-face with the moments where we spiral and lose control of how we see the people around us. When understood, language creates community and connection; when it’s not, it’s a form of brutal, painful alienation. And what better way to show brutality than through blood and gore?