In the backstage of a Latin dance competition, twelve-year-old Lotus watches mothers combing their daughters’ hair, an intimate ritual she has never known firsthand. Her solitary attempt to mimic the gesture unravels into a physical confrontation with the mother of her imagination, a figure pieced together from other people’s stories, childhood observations, and years of quiet longing. “Comb” treats hair combing as a charged, ceremonial act, one that for its young protagonist stands in for security, belonging, and a closeness that never took shape. Through tangled hair and imagined touch, the film becomes a bodily reckoning with absence, resistance, and repair. Amid the chaos and knots, it asks whether we can comb through the past to make room for the child still within us.
