TAt some point in every child’s life, they begin to see their parents not just as all-powerful protectors, but also as people with all their faults. Spurred on by the discovery of her mother’s suicide attempt, Belgian filmmaker Faustine Cros looks at countless home videos from her childhood with new eyes. In light of what happened, these seemingly innocuous family moments reveal the stark paradox of motherhood, where feelings of joy and entrapment collide.

Cros’s mother Valérie, once a successful makeup artist, put her career on hold after the birth of her children, but the transition was difficult. While much of the film is based on old footage shot by her filmmaker father, Cros brilliantly inserts her own directorial eye as she sifts through the grains of the past; through astute but delicate editing, she carefully isolates decades-old images that reveal the emotional fissures behind everyday routine. From the stress of a botched grocery run to Valérie’s quiet sigh after a messy dinner, these small moments of despair, loneliness and exhaustion, when strung together, convey the enormous scale of the work that goes into housework. It’s perhaps telling that Valérie, now in her 60s, rarely cooks.

Watching the younger Valérie struggle with household chores, you wish her husband would just put down the camera and help. His filming eventually ended after a particularly explosive video in which Valérie erupts into a heated speech accusing men – and society in general – of placing the burden of domestic life solely on women’s shoulders. But Cros doesn’t take sides or rush to judgment; instead, her reinterpretation of old footage becomes a moving advocacy of sorts, acknowledging Valérie’s resilience as anything but ordinary.

“A Life Like Any Other” airs August 16 on True Story.