“Momo” follows a working-class immigrant mother navigating the gig economy in suburban Toronto. The film explores a survivor’ s mentality - how instability makes Momo transactional, hyper-independent, and distrustful of kindness. Her pursuit of a car seat, symbolizing safety and stability, sparks a crisis shaped by class suspicion and racialized assumptions. Though rooted in a mother’s fear of being seen as a failure, the film rejects victimhood and sentimentality, examining how pressure to appear self-reliant distorts agency. “Momo” interrogates who’ s deemed “deserving” in a society defined by invisible thresholds of access. Every frame rejects pity to honour mothers building futures in cracks.

At dawn, a fiercely determined single mom/gig worker, Momo, fights through a crowd of undercutting labourers to secure a cleaning job. She hustles to juggle work and her 5-year-old daughter, who waits in their unsafe, carseat-less car. When a vigilant neighbour reports her, she panics and leaves her vehicle. The desperate single mom finds her way to a free carseat from an affluent couple, only to face humiliating suspicion as a “reseller.” After a tense confrontation with the husband, she’s unexpectedly granted the seat by the immigrant wife. In the end, she quietly cleans dirt from the carseat’s cracks, before reuniting with her daughter.