An excitingly fresh take on family relationships, Anna Muylaert's THE SECOND MOTHER centers around Val, a hard-working live-in housekeeper in modern day Sao Paulo. Val is perfectly content to take care of every one of her wealthy employers' needs, from cooking and cleaning to being a surrogate mother to their teenage son, who she has raised since he was a toddler. But when Val's estranged daughter Jessica show up the unspoken but intrinsic class barriers that exist within the home are thrown into disarray. Jessica is smart, confident, and ambitious, and refuses to accept the upstairs/downstairs dynamic, testing relation- ships and loyalties and forcing everyone to reconsider what family really means.