A mother sees her homeless son's graffiti-tags wherever she goes. She interprets his signatures as signals to her and wants to respond. She starts writing SON under his tags. One day, she suddenly gets a reply. Under SON it now says Hello mom.
Leona Cauklija is an artist and filmmaker, based in Stockholm and trained at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and Copenhagen.
Leona sees art as a form of communication beyond language, distance, age and intellect. In her work, she explores how different art forms — and their distinct audiences — can meet and create dialogue between worlds that would otherwise rarely touch each other.
Through film, she wants to mediate between the signatures on electrical cabinets and the signatures at art galleries, between the street and the salon. The film SON is for everyone with a graffiti heart, for everyone with an anti-graffiti heart, and for everyone with a mother's heart.
SON was awarded Best Documentary at the Tampere Film Festival in Finland (2026) and received an honorable mention at the Uppsala Short Film Festival (2025). Leona is currently working on her next production, Modersmål, which is expected to premiere in 2028.
