Mothers have always been challenging for daughters to deal with.  Cynthia Lester knows a thing or two about that.

The New York-based filmmaker turned the camera on her own mother, resulting in a wonderfully compassionate and fascinating film, My Mother's Garden, now at the Hot Docs Festival.

The film opens with a shot of Cynthia's mother, Eugenia, looking glamorous in a red gown, prancing around a castle-like setting.  What follows is shocking for its contrast between this and the one Cynthia and her siblings know.

Eugenia Lester, Cynthia’s mother, suffers from what’s known as Compulsive Hoarding Disorder.  Both the disease and its terrible effects are shown in graphic, sometimes disturbing detail, as the family comes to grips with the illness and the steps they must take to heal the rift within their family.

Making films since she was in junior high, Lester had a spotty upbringing, with little time spent at ome. She says she had "always been searching" for a way to flesh out her various film experiments –and using her family as the subject was the obvious way to expand her skills.

My Mother's Garden is Lester’s attempt at "try(ing) to give people a little more understanding in terms of how I grew up - what it's like to grow up under these circumstances."

Among the shots of knee-deep high items, impassable doorways, and Cynthia's mother entering and exiting her house via a window, there are also interviews with neighbours, whose dislike of Eugenia is evident.  The scenes serve to highlight the underlying class issue of the film.

"She was the struggling mom, the fighter,” Lester explains, “We could've lived in the projects, like every other poor family - we would've felt more at home, but she wanted a better life for her children. She struggled and worked 24/7, had three jobs, she went on welfare. We were the only poor family in this neighbourhood. We felt alienated. We always knew we were different.”

Lester says it was her mother’s desire to give her kids a better life that started her hoarding problems. 

“My mum would go to the Christmas tree lane and buy the tree the day after Christmas, so it was cheaper. That’s when she started pulling in things that others were throwing away, (thinking) 'I can give these things to my children'. It’s that mentality of never being able to provide for us the way she wanted

Lester uses her mother's disorder in two interesting ways: as a springboard for her own compassion towards her and her family, and as a commentary on the rampant consumerist culture that she says has taken away from more important things.

"It’s about how our society deals with consumerism, how we tend to hold on to material things to bring us wealth, this idea of ... who you are through your things, rather than through creating a safe, comfortable environment, a loving environment. Where are people promoting that ideal? No, it's 'oh you have to have the nice car, the new fridge, the clothes'."

One of the biggest challenges was culling the footage of she and her family's journey.  Lester had to make some hard choices about what went and what stayed, all while trying to balance the personal aspects with the demands of a good narrative. 

"There was 180 hours of footage -definitely good moments and a good story there. I had never made a narrative feature that was 70 minutes long, and it was such a struggle to keep people's attention, to keep the themes flowing from one thing to the next, to keep a natural organic rhythm, without feeling like you're throwing something in there that's going to jolt you.”

How did her mother deal with having her life thusly documented and exposed?

“Oh, she's comfortable in front of the camera,” says Lester, “she likes the attention. It lets her put down her barriers in a way. She’s so used to being the strict mom all the time, there’s always something wrong she has to talk about, but camera she'll lighten up a bit. I enjoyed that time of getting to know my mum, and she liked the attention, especially if other people would come around. She was very isolated, so having us be there was helpful.”

In terms of the film itself, Lester says her mother “has mixed reviews about it. She supports me and my art, my desire to get this story out there, to help people through this story. She herself does not believe she has this problem, still to this day, but she is going to therapy and she is taking care of her life.”

The final scene is of her mother, wandering through the woods.  Even the red dress from the beginning makes a return appearance.

“We went to Poland to show her, in her happiest state, being with nature, and moving her from all the things she’s created, to making her own little special garden of things. I also wanted to bookend her coming back to the castle, with the idea of introducing her as very active, beautiful woman, so that you see her in that state before you see the chaos... and so I felt it was important to go back to that at the end.”

While documenting her mother presented its own unique set of challenges, the exposure of both herself and her family's past was a different matter.

“Yeah, that was very hard, something I dealt with on a daily basis. My brothers didn't necessarily want to be exposed this way, that’s not how they process their life. They're more closed off about it. It was hard for me to do it -I’m exposing my family, and everybody else who is related to my family, but I feel like in order to have a healthy society we have to be open about these things, and if it has to start with me, I'll do it, I’ll put myself out there for the cause.”

The “cause”, as she sees it, is allowing healing within families, as well as creating a greater awareness of the disorder that afflicted her mother.

“What I’m hoping is that people see there are obviously a lot of deep-rooted issues, but I wanted to show a family can come together and create a source of strength and come out of it in a beautiful way.”

My Mother’s Garden screens on Monday, April 21st, at 9.15pm at the Al Green Theatre; it screens again on April 23rd at 1.30pm at the Cumberland Cinemas.

www.myspace.com/mymothersgarden

For more information, go to www.hotdocs.ca.