The cinema offers us films to reflect on a peculiar group such as the family. In this article we give you the title of some films that meet this requirement.
Last update: November 14, 2022
We do not choose our birth family, yet it is decisive on many occasions. Whether it is by mere belonging or otherwise, on many occasions the family prepares or encourages certain decisions. Choose from the family movies we have selected for you.
But before we begin we want to ask ourselves: what is family? It is a group of people linked by a first or second degree of consanguinity, although there are also family relationships of adoption.
Family patterns vary according to several variables, such as society, culture or the weight of religion. Consequently, too the regulation of the obligations and rights of families everywhere depends on these variables.
How can we see, the family universe is immense and complex, has many shades; As many families as there are in this world. Something that we usually ignore, but that cinema brings us closer to thinking about it.
1. Familiaby Fernando León de Aranoa
Familia is the first film by Fernando León de Aranoa, a director who had already worked in the world of television. In 2012 Paolo Genovese directs A perfect familya film that takes the plot of León de Aranoa as its starting point.
The central theme of the movie it is the crisis of the family. An argument that takes shape through the need for Santiago (Juan Luis Galiardo) to celebrate his anniversary surrounded by a false “kinship” that makes him feel loved for a day.
However, the theatrical representation of the clan reveals the dark side of this institution, which is revealed in the metonymic images of the credits on which the camera pauses to show the details of a family photo that hides the true story of the relationship between the its members.
Domestic violence
There are numerous references to domestic violence in the movie. In the opening scene, Martín tells the anecdote of Santiago’s birth that refers to this type of violence: his father wanted to be the first to beat him so that it was not the doctor, a stranger, who gave him the first “pinches”.
There are other scenes where this type of violence is exemplified: when Santiago tightens his belt and adds: “and, if not, we can always use it to hit children”. In another scene, looking at a family photograph, Santiago suggests that his father mistreated his mother.
The contradictions inherent in this institution manifest themselves in the juxtaposition of two planes. On the one hand, the scenes of the game or the space of appearances. In it emerge the secrets, the lies and the main problems of the artists, as well as the crisis of the marriage of the director and the leading actress. On the other hand, the space of daily life or scenes from the “real life” of the characters.
2. A separation
Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, it is a paradigm of contemporary Iranian cinema. In this way of making films, the desire to portray the daily life and conflicts of Persian society in a naturalistic perspective without artifice prevails.
Fahardi belongs to the new wave of Iranian directors introduced by Abbas Kiarostami. Except for the movie Shah-re-ziba, in 2004, in which he dealt with the death penalty, the central plot of the rest of the five features that complete his filmography is the crisis of the couple.
Nader (Payman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) are a middle-class Iranian couple who have filed for divorce. He wants the whole family to go abroad, where his daughter Termeh will have a better future, but Nader refuses: his argument is that she must take care of her father with Alzheimer’s.
The film depicts the process of destroying two families due to their members putting personal interests first to clarify the truth. In the background, the resolution of a conflict that confronts the marriages represented in the film.
From the beginning of the film, the viewer is a privileged witness whose judgment on the behavior and attitude of the characters varies according to the information available to them.
3.Rosette
Among the films about families, we also find some in which the abandonment and abandonment of parents mark the fate of their offspring. This film by Belgian brothers Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne, winners of the Palme d’Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, was the most visceral film experience of the year.
Rosetta, played by Émilie Dequenne, lives in a garage with her alcoholic mother. He simply wants to change his life. The struggle for decent work also exemplifies the struggle of the poor against the poor in a capitalist system.
Rosetta is a character who settles in the viewer’s heart before there is time to reflect on her. It is as if the Dardenne brothers wanted to transform an experience of realism into something “banal”. The film made such an impression in Belgium that in November 1999 a law on wages for young people was passed under the name of the “Rosetta plan“.
4. Movies about family: Go and you will liveby Radu Mihaileanu
The first epic film dedicated to the emigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Radu Mihaileanu’s work follows a formula that allows viewers to be emotionally involved in a story that much of the planet is unaware of.
Schlomo is a nine-year-old Ethiopian boy who is sent by his mother to “Operation Moses”, a program that brings Ethiopian Jews back to Israel. But Scholomo has a secret: he is neither Jewish nor orphan, two lies that will mark his entire existence.
In Israel, Schlomo is lucky enough to fall into a happy and loving family, composed of a protective mother, a caring father and a wise grandfather. It is a family drama that embraces Israel’s complex and divisive politics, in which moderates confront fundamentalists for the “soul” of the country.
The young Schlomo finds himself at the center of the debate, as black, orthodox and secular opinions explode against the backdrop of political protests, air raids and racial prejudice.
Go and Live it is as much the story of a child as it is of any person who begins to grow up and is reborn in a new country.
5. Movies about the family: Little Miss Sunshineby Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
A family melodrama, Little Miss Sunshine and also a magnificent staging of the formula of bringing a family together for a considerable period of time .
Little Miss Sunshine represents the best of American cinema, where in addition to the great films assembled in the studio, there is also independent film production.
The Hoover family travel to California to support the youngest of the clan (Abigail Breslin) as she tries to win the Little Miss Sunshine contest. During the journey, each of them will have to face their own ghosts.
A united family without knowing it
The family consists of six people. Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette), a mother who has to take on more responsibilities every day, plus the care of a brother who has attempted suicide.
Meanwhile, Sheryl’s husband, Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear), is looking to launch a career as a motivational speaker. Sheryl’s son Dwayne (Paul Dano) has vowed not to speak until he achieves his goal of becoming a test pilot in the Air Force.
Richard’s father, Edwin (Alan Arkin), also lives with the family; he lived in a residence, but his drug relationship drove him out of the center.
Finally, there’s Olive (Abigail Breslin), the aspiring contestant in a beauty pageant. Little Miss Sunhine it brings us closer to a group of souls who are a little naive and besieged by conflicts who must begin a journey to reach that goal that unites them.
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