Opening film IDFA 2015
a film by Tom Fassaert / documentary, 90′, 16mm/8mm/vhs/HD, colour and b&w
WOW screens this award-winning documentary with an introduction and Q&A with the director.
”Following the problematic relationship between my 95-year-old grandmother and my father, this film explores the delicate terrain along the fault lines of my own family. A personal quest through four generations that inadvertently becomes complicated when my grandmother makes an unexpected confession.”
Free entry, English subtitles, English Q&A, drinks available before and after.
Curated by WOW Artist in Residence Kristina Daurova.
Crew
Written, directed & filmed by Tom Fassaert
Assistant director: Thabi Mooi
Editing: Claudio Hughes
Awards
- Best European Documentary 2016 (nominated) @ European Film Awards, 2016
- Gouden Kalf for Best Long Documentary @ Nederlands Film Festival, 2016
- Special Jury Award @ International Documentary Filmfest. Amsterdam (IDFA), 2015
- Special Jury Award @ Millenium Documentary Film Festival Brussels, 2016
- Best Film Award in International Competition @ It’s All True Brazil, 2016
- Best Film Award in International Competition @ Biografilm Bologna Italy, 2016
- Best Documentary Award @ Sopot International Film Festival Poland, 2016
- Audience Award @ Faito Doc Film Festival Italy, 2016
- Golden Nanook Award for Best Film @ Festival Flahertiana Russia, 2016
- Special Jury Award @ Zürich Film Festival, 2016
- PerSo Masterpiece Award for Best Feature @ PerSo Film Festival Italy, 2016
- Best Feature Documentary Award @ Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Fest, 2016
- Grand Jury Prize @ Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Fest, 2016
- Special Jury Award @ CinéDoc Tbilisi Georgia, 2016
- Grand Prix of the Jury @ Family Film Project Portugal, 2016
- St. Louis Film Critics’ Award (Best Doc Feature) @ St. Louis Int Film Fest USA 2016
- Dutch Directors Guild Award 2016 for best documentary
- Kristallen Film @ Dutch cinema’s – more than 20.000 tickets sold, 2015
Reviews
Variety: “A Family Affair is both an anguished plea for information and a moving acceptance of the things it cannot change. It’s the kind of intimately dispassionate anatomy of a character that only a family member could make, and one from which she emerges as an unforgettable anti-heroine: immediately charismatic and frighteningly remote, potentially bipolar or a master manipulator of facades. It’s the sheer unpredictable perversity of human nature that takes the breath away at key points in Fassaert’s unsettling, perhaps unsolvable, inquiry.
Huffington Post: “It is one of the most artful films I have ever seen to deal with family trauma.”
Cineuropa.org: “A passionate and highly personal documentary, but one of an appeal as universal as family ties in all their complexity and contradictory nature, a painful yet entertaining story… as compelling as a thriller.”
Richard Poplak (South African author and journalist): ” A Family Affair is a – well, what? Part melodrama, part mystery, all documentary, it’s an agonising portrait of a family’s undoing… a beautifully shot, emotionally wrought endorsement of Tolstoy’s ageless dictum: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'”
Filmkrant: **** “Hij had zich als filmmaker en als mens nauwelijks nog meer bloot kunnen geven. Een buitengewoon familieportret dat nog lang beklijft.”
Parool: **** “Een schitterende emotionele rollercoaster waarin Tom Fassaert zijn camera richt op zijn disfunctionele familie.”
Trouw: **** “Wat Tom Fassaerts geweldige ‘A Family Affair’ verder ook is – een egodocument, een monsterfilm, een oorlogsfilm – alleen een familiekwestie is het zeker niet.”
Telegraaf: **** “A family affair maakt op een ijzersterke manier inzichtelijk hoe iedere keuze en situatie uit het verleden oneindig kan blijven nagalmen.”
HP/De Tijd: **** “Hij weet de drang tot gepsychologiseer te weerstaan en toont zich vooral een scherp observator. Een adembenemend familieportret. ”
NRC: “Sommige verhalen zijn zo groot, dat je ze alleen klein kunt vertellen… een verhaal over trauma en de narcistische paradox, die een gebrek aan eigenwaarde met een overdreven zelfbeeld compenseert.”