The Bassinet
2019 · 6m · Canada
Directed by Tiffany Hsiung
Genres: drama, essay film, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
The arrival of a vintage bassinet at the home of filmmaker Tiffany Hsiung and her fiancée Victoria Mata stirs questions about sexuality, cultural identity, and the pressure to have a child.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most people want their queer cinema to *resolve* something—identity, desire, family. Hsiung does the smarter thing: she lets the bassinet sit there, unanswered, and lets that refusal do all the work.
The essay film's great tradition is the collision of intimate object and philosophical weight; here, Hsiung inherits that lineage with precise restraint, letting a single prop become the vessel for intergenerational and cultural interrogation without ever overstating the frame.
What makes this breathe is the decision to keep the camera still while the narration orbits—that compositional choice transforms what could be therapy into architecture, and you feel the pressure of unspoken expectations in every held moment of silence.