Mind of the Yellow Tree (2021)

Mind of the Yellow Tree
Theatrical poster for Mind of the Yellow Tree
Directed by	Robin Bantoa
Running time	109 minutes
Country	Quetana
Budget	32 million

Mind of the Yellow Tree is a 2021 Quetanan dark fantasy drama film.

Plot

12-year-old Grien has a close bond with his seriously ill mother, and maintains the household during her regular chemotherapy treatments at the hospital. Grien's grandmother often visits, and suggests that Grien live with her in the event of his mother's death. Grien is reluctant to take up this offer due to her cold personality. At school, he is regularly tormented by his classmate Ty. He is also plagued by a nightmare in which the old church near his house collapses into a hole, where someone else is in danger of plummeting and he tries to hold onto them. Grien vents his emotions by drawing, a talent inherited from his mother. One night, exactly seven minutes past midnight, he sees the large yellow yew tree next to the church transform into a gnarled animate figure that approaches his home. The Tree says that it will tell Grien three stories during their next meetings, after which Grien must tell the Tree a fourth tale in return.

In the Tree's first story, a prince escapes from his stepmother, the supposedly-evil elderly queen, but then kills his sleeping bride under a yew tree and makes the queen the scapegoat so that his people can drive her away and make him king. As Grien's mother worsens, Grien moves in with his grandmother. After he angrily damages her valuable clock, the Tree appears and tells the second story: a hard-hearted parson forbids an apothecary from extracting medicine from an old yew tree, only to rescind this measure when his own children become ill. However, the apothecary cannot help him, and the Tree begins to destroy the parson's house as punishment. Grien enthusiastically joins in on the destruction, but comes to find that he has trashed his grandmother's living room instead. His grandmother, while shocked and bitter, does not punish Grien.

The doctors turn to a final treatment involving yew wood. Grien implores the Tree to heal his mother, only for the Tree to dismiss the matter as outside of his responsibility. At school, Ty proclaims that he will no longer bother Grien because he "no longer sees [him]". The Tree tells a story of an invisible man who did not want to be so. With the Tree's support, Grien angrily attacks Ty, hospitalizing him. To his astonishment, the headmistress refrains from punishing him as she comprehends his current home situation. When it becomes clear that his mother will die, Grien runs to the yew tree, where the Tree forces him to relive his nightmare, in which his mother dangles for her life. Grien finally tells his own tale, admitting that he had long suspected his mother would not survive and secretly hoped that she would die soon, which fills him with guilt. The Tree tells him that he did not truly want his mother to die, but simply to end his own suffering.

Grien's grandmother finds him asleep under the yew tree and drives him to the hospital, during which Grien reconciles with her. At the hospital, Grien embraces his mother one last time and as she is passing she glances at the Tree. She dies at seven minutes past midnight. Grien returns to his grandmother's house, where his mother's old room is refurbished for him. In the room, he finds his mother's old art book, which depicts the stories that were told to him by the Tree, and a drawing of his mother as a child with the Tree, realizing he was always good.

Cast

• [[ ]] as Grien
• [[ ]] as the Tree
• [[ ]] as Mera, the grandmother
• [[ ]] as Mom
• [[ ]] as Ty, a bully