FAMILY THRILLERS

The IDFA Film Festival has identified one of the most sought-after genres of contemporary documentaries: family thrillers created on the basis of amateur chronicles.

Reimagining the concept of a family’s video chronicles – “everything is not what it seems”.

This is demonstrated by the competing Iranian picture "Silent house" - Farnaz Jurabchian, Mohammadreza Jurabchian (Iran, France, Canada, Philippines, Qatar). The history of the family house, with all its dusty corners and old armchairs. The house once belonged to the fourth wife of Shah Reza Pahlavi. At its entrance in 1943 stood three chairs on which, at the time of the Tehran Conference, the heads of the states sat and decided the fate of the world.

Decades have passed, and now the family of distant relatives lives in the house. Representatives of four generations have been fans of cinematography: 8mm camera, then VHS, then digital; in the end, from amateurs they have turned into professionals. For the last several years, two directors (brother and sister) have been filming their mother - a former revolutionary, their grandmother - a victim of grandfather's terror, their cousins and uncles – each one with her or his own depression. The house itself - with its walls, bookcases, floor lamps, sofas – resists being drowned by the Great Scandals of Time. And, of course, it captures Time in the labyrinth of its corridors.

Or - "The Super 8 YEARS" by Annie Ernaux, David Ernaux-Briot (France). Annie Ernau is the recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. Ernau and her husband bought a movie camera in 1972 when she was teaching literature at a grade school. Subsequently, she became a memoirist who plays a detective in relationship to memory.

She also comments on the old footage - in particular, on the theatrical effect that the camera had on the family: two sons, travels, domestic squabbles; writing books; trivia of life. Children grow up, marriage dissolves - there are less and less people in the frame, but more and more landscapes.

In general, in vogues is deciphering of family video chronicles. Videos that chronicle manipulations, which are not shunned – and even sometimes sought – by respectable people with movie cameras, who call themselves film lovers. They are usually full of mirth, but also masters of subverting reality by creating fake family stories.