Three mothers become close friends because they each have an autistic child. They learn, encourage, and support one another, and although they live in separate regions—one in Taipei (northern Taiwan), another in Kaohsiung (southern Taiwan), and the other in Hualien (eastern Taiwan)—they form a strong bond. These three tough moms visit one another with their kids, helping the children experience different family lifestyles and surroundings, learn social skills through interactions, and build and maintain relationships.

This film presents four boys with autism spectrum disorders, showing how their everyday lives (feelings, behavior, and language) differ from “normal” kids. Their difference is often seen by common people as “strangeness,” and they are regarded as “abnormal.” This, however, is how the idea of “others” is constructed in our society. If people were more willing to understand and accept their “difference,” not only would people like these children have more opportunities to develop their unique potentialities in life, the world might also become a more richly diverse place. The children in this documentary accept and get along with one another, while the “normal” people outside the screen ironically neither accept these kids nor cooperate harmoniously with other “normal” people. This film could be seen as a fable about “identification vs. difference,” “normal vs. abnormal,” and “inclusion vs. exclusion.”

The colorful 2D animation in the film is made from the kids’ own drawings and paintings, reflecting inner worlds which they themselves can’t express with words and which others cannot reach. Through the paintings and animation, the kids transform from “filmed objects” to participants or “subjective filmmakers,” who worked together with the director and crew to jointly make this documentary.

DVD source：Taiwan Cinema Toolkit, Ministry of Culture, R.O.C.