Two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali plays an assassin and widowed father in Bassam Tariq's thriller, a Gala at the Royal Festival Hall.
Mahershala Ali, a two-time Academy Award winner, leads Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Saturday 17 October 2026. The thriller is a Gala in the closing weekend of the seventieth London Film Festival.
Ali was born in Oakland in 1974 and played basketball at Saint Mary’s College of California. He turned to acting and took a master’s degree at New York University.
He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight in 2016 and for Green Book in 2018. He was the first black actor to win twice in that category.
Tariq was born in Karachi in 1986 and began in documentary. His first feature, Mogul Mowgli, played the festival in 2020. He and Ali were first paired on Marvel’s Blade.
Ali plays Latif, an assassin and father of three whose wife’s death leaves him holding two lives apart. When a job goes wrong, he runs with his children.
Ali also sits for an onstage conversation about his career during the festival. John Cho and Giancarlo Esposito join him in the cast, and Orion Pictures distributes the film.