By SHOTA TOMONAGA/ Staff Writer
August 17, 2025 at 07:00 JST
A scene from “#TwoMoms” (Provided by Satoko Nagamura)
They struggle with infertility treatment as well as child-rearing.
They quarrel with their partners.
In short, those featured in “#TwoMoms” are everyday people who could be your friends, neighbors or coworkers.
They happen to be same-sex couples with children, or in one case, trying to have kids.
The film follows the lives of four couples over the course of one and a half years.
It was shot and directed by Satoko Nagamura, 42, who heads a nonprofit organization called Kodomap that supports sexual minorities who want to have and raise children.
She is raising a 3-year-old child, who was born through sperm donated by an acquaintance, with her same-sex partner.
One of the four couples in the film receives infertility treatment. The others are raising children born through the process known as donor conception.
The children range in age from newborn to 17.
One scene depicts a woman who moves out to live with her single-mother partner and her child. The woman seems anxious as she says, “I want to build a trustful relationship rather than become a parent.”
In another, a 17-year-old daughter raised by a same-sex couple is asked what makes people parents and replies: “Those who I think are members of my family are all parents.”
‘INVISIBLE BEINGS’
Because same-sex couples, like those shown in the film, generally fear that their children will face discrimination and prejudice, they tend not to share details of their lives, even to their close circle of friends, and become “invisible beings,” according to Nagamura.
To conform to the “right” family image in society, “I have tried my best not to show my weakness or worries to prove to my close circle that we are a model family worthy of having a child,” the director said.
But in reality, she struggles to soothe her crying child and quarrels with her partner.
“I want the audience to learn about us and who we really are,” Nagamura added. “I want to reduce discrimination and prejudice coming from ignorance, even if only little by little.”
“#TwoMoms” will open at the K’s Cinema theater in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district on Sept. 20.
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