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Posted Documentaries

Woodstock Film Festival: Our American Family

“If 21 million Americans are struggling with addiction, how many family members are struggling alongside them?”

Hallee Adelman

Directed & Produced by Hallee Adelman & Sean King O’Grady, Our American Family is a brutally honest  documentary that gives viewers an inside look into how addiction affects families. 

Nicole is a drug addict who has been in an out of rehab over the years. In fact, she got pregnant in during one stint at rehab and is now leaning on her mother Linda to help her raise her daughter while she goes back for treatment for the tenth time. As the matriarch, Linda feels enormous pressure to not only help Nicole stay on track with her sobriety but also to raise her granddaughter and keep things together on the homefront. Her two grown sons are skeptical that Nicole will recover and are resentful about how much energy is diverted to dealing with their sister’s rollercoaster ride of addiction and sobriety. And to add to the familial strain, Nicole and Linda frequently find themselves butting heads.

Our American Family follows Nicole and her family as they navigate the ongoing repercussions of addiction. There are no interviews, just footage of the family living their day to day. The fly-on-the-wall perspective thrusts the audience right into the center of the evolving tension. This family could be any family in America dealing with the ongoing battle between addiction and recovery.

Our American Family will have its world premiere at the 2021 Woodstock Film Festival. Visit the film’s official website for more information.

Posted Documentaries

Woodstock Film Festival: My So-Called Selfish Life

“I’m childfree and it’s fabulous.”

Marcia Drut-Davis

Women carry the burden of the many expectations society has for them. The biggest one: motherhood. If a woman in her childbearing years decides against having children, she’s considered selfish. In fact, if she makes any reproductive choices at all, including the use of contraceptives and birth control, voluntary hysterectomies or having an abortion, she will be criticized by someone who feels they have a say in the matter. Many women are seen as walking uteruses rather than individuals who have a lot to offer other than giving birth. And those who want children but can’t have them due to many factors, including infertility, socioeconomic inequality and forced sterilization, are often seen as some sort of failure because they couldn’t achieve the goal assigned to them by societal norms. Being childfree or childless can make women feel like outcasts. Or worse. Silenced. 

Childfree — won’t have children

Childless — can’t have children

Written, directed and produced by Therese Shechter, My So-Called Selfish Life gives a voice to the women out there who live their lives without birthing children, whether it was their choice to do so or not. It’s a profoundly important documentary about a subject that is often swept under the rug. Any childfree or childless woman, including myself, who has endured awkward and hurtful conversations with people in their lives about their situation  will feel not only validated but redeemed to hear so many women in similar situations. And for those who cast judgement on others about the idea of maternal regret, they may learn a thing or two about compassion. 

The documentary includes interviews with a variety of experts including doctors, authors and activists. These are bolstered with historical context and pop culture references. Almost every possible approach was taken making this a very thorough exploration on the subject matter. With that said, I wish the film had explored how social media platforms, including TikTok, are being used to openly discuss childfree living but it unfortunately does not.

I can see this documentary doing well through word-of-mouth recommendations, with childfree and childless women sharing it with others to encourage discussion and understanding.

My So-Called Selfish Life premiered at the 2021 Woodstock Film Festival. Learn more about the documentary on the official website.

Posted Female Filmmakers

TIFF: The Good House

Hildy Good (Sigourney Weaver) knows the town of Wendover, MA like the back of her hand. She’s one of top real estate agents for the community, has lived there most of her life and co-exists her her ex-husband, her two daughters and her new neighbor Rebecca (Morena Baccarin). The problem with Hildy is that she’s a raging alcoholic. A functional one but still raging. Her family stages an intervention and while Hildy agrees to get better she just continues to get worse. While her business flails and her blackouts become more frequent, she enlists the help of her ex Frankie (Kevin Kline) to help her with a particularly daunting project. As Hildy rekindles an old flame, she has to come to terms with her deeply rooted problems before everything in her life falls apart.

“I was born three drinks short of comfortable.”

Hildy Good

Based on the novel by Ann Leary and directed by Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky, The Good House is a solid drama with well-drawn characters and a decidedly classic feel. Sigourney Weaver is absolutely enthralling as Hildy. Both Weaver and Kevin Kline play against type in roles that are really just so interesting to watch on screen and not readily available to actors their age. Every character seems fully realized even the bit players which is an impressive feat.

I wasn’t sure at first about having the protagonist break the fourth wall and narrate to the audience but after a while I got accustomed to it. There is also a light fantastical element that fits well with Hildy’s story and becomes an important plot point later on.  While the movie was shot in Nova Scotia, it did still have a distinctly New England vibe.

Notes to add: Wendover, MA is fictional but seems to represent a North Shore town like Beverly, MA. Most of the characters are white with the exception of Asian and Latinx characters.

The Good House is distributed by DreamWorks and recently premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.

Posted Documentaries

TIFF: Julia

Julia Child was a revolutionary. In a time when home cooks were looking for anything canned, boxed or frozen in order to ease the burden of housewives, Julia Child came on the air touting French cuisine with all its complexities. But she did so in a way that taught folks on the other side of the television screen how to  step up their game in the kitchen with materials they already had at home and food they could get at their grocery store. Child started a movement that made television cooking something that people watched for both entertainment and pleasure. She also sparked a culinary renaissance bringing back the fine art of cooking to the US.

Directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, best known for their documentary RBG, Julia is a celebration of one of the greatest and most important icons of the 20th century. The doc follows Julia’s story from her early days in Pasadena, her secretarial work abroad during WWII, her marriage to her beloved Paul Child, her culinary education in France, her first cookbook, her work in Boston for PBS and her ever enduring fame that made her a national sensation. Having grown up in the Boston area, I watched Julia Child cook on my local PBS station WGBH. And over the years since her death in 2004 and the many celebrations during her centennial year in 2012, I knew Julia Child was special. But Cohen and West’s documentary really drove that home.

The documentary boasts amazing food photography woven in with archival footage of Julia Child in the kitchen, personal photographs and letters, audio recordings of Child talking about her life, as well as interviews. Talking heads include celebrity chefs she directly influenced, family members, friends and many others. Foodies will recognize some big names in the cooking world including Ina Garten, Sara Moulton, Jacques Pepin, Ruth Reichl, Jose Andres and many more. Cohen and West do a fantastic job adding context to Julia’s story while also conveying her spirit, her warmth, her tenacity and her willingness to learn and evolve. I laughed, I cried and afterwards I was starving!

Julia is part of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival’s TIFF Docs slate. Visit the Sony Pictures Classics website for more details about the film.

Posted Female Filmmakers

TIFF: Mothering Sunday

Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) is motherless on Mothering Sunday (a UK/Irish holiday celebrating mothers). Abandoned by her mother at a young age, Jane grew up an orphan and has spent most of her life working as a maid for the Nivens (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman). The Nivens and many of the families of the community have suffered a great loss during WWI. The only young man to come back alive was Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor), a law student who lives next door to the Nivens. Jane and Paul carry on a clandestine affair. Their steamy romance is fleeting because Paul must marry someone else equal to his social class. He proposes to the Emma (Emma D’Arcy), a young woman adorned in the latest fashions and from a good family but whose blood has run cold due to the tragedy that’s befallen her. Jane must come to terms with love and loss and channel that into her writing.

Directed by Eva Husson and based on the novel by Graham Swift, Mothering Sunday offers viewers a period piece that is both idyllic and cut with tragedy. It’s perfect for Downton Abbey fans looking for something a little more subdued but of the same era.

I wish Colin Firth and Olivia Colman were given more to do in the film. Due to the nature of their characters, Firth is quite reserved and Colman has a few outbursts of anger and frustration. But otherwise they’re  supporting players with small roles, Colman more so than Firth.

The main stars are O’Connor and Young who have great chemistry. Jane’s life is shown in three stages: her affair with Paul, her romance with Donald (Sope Diris), and her later years as a celebrated writer (played by Glenda Jackson).  Her two romantic partners have great respect for her. No toxic relationships here. I found this to be quite refreshing.

Mothering Sunday is part of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival Special Presentations slate.

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