Film: Familia
Running time: 82 mins
Director: Alberto Herskovits & Mikael Wiström
Starring: Nati Barrientos
Genre: Documentary
Country: Sweden
This film will be screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which takes place in London between 23rd March and 1st April, 2011. Find out more about this event by clicking here.
The Swedish filmmaker Mikael Wistrom first met the Barrientos family over thirty years ago whilst working on another film in Peru. He remained in contact with them and so heard about the hardships and tough decisions that they were facing. Realising their predicament was one which countless other families were in, he returned to tell their story.
Naty is the heart of her family. She is a mother, grandmother and devoted spouse. As the film opens, she makes the difficult decision to leave them all and travel across the Atlantic to Spain. She is at an age where she should be reaping the rewards of years spent working hard, but instead she has found a job as a maid in a Spanish hotel in order to try and ease the financial burden on her family.
The narrative voice in this documentary is provided by Naty’s daughter, Judith. She is a gentle, artistic soul who keeps a diary to cope with all the pressures surrounding her mother’s departure. She feels shame that she has not gone instead of her mother, as well as the pressure of filling her shoes and caring for the whole family in her absence. As well as mediating between her brother and sister-in-law to try and save their relationship, she also does her best to help her father…
In one way, this is a very simple story, showing a situation that thousands of families go through. However, it is also a very personal insight into the dynamics of a single family and how individuals cope with the circumstances. In yet another way, it is a universal message about the sacrifices people make out of love and the bonds which hold people together.
Wistrom and Herskovits have given us a unique insight into family life with an intimacy very rarely achieved on a cinema screen. The emotions of the individuals are raw and, at times, hard to watch – they have captured the poignancy of this situation brilliantly. The film in no way tries to give an explicit social commentary, neither does it pass judgement on the actions of any individual. They have selected footage sensitively and with care so that almost nothing about this story is told explicitly; instead the viewer learns everything about these people through what they see, and through snippets of conversation, almost as if we were visitors to the family home. We share a lot of the emotions because there is a direct connection made to the people on the screen, and because the situation, while in one way personal to this family, is also one that everybody can relate to.
What comes across most of all is that Naty is an incredible lady with deep reserves of dignity and strength. Even when she is far away in Spain, she provides her family with comfort and wisdom in her weekly phone-calls, rarely dwelling on her own difficult and lonely situation. Her message – that love can survive anything – is echoed in the rest of the film. Daniel, her partner and soul-mate, loves her almost painfully deeply, and does his best to be both a father and mother to their youngest son. He, too, is somebody who works hard for very little reward, but still finds the time and energy to take the young boy to the beach and to play with him. He also does his best to keep his eldest son on the straight and narrow, and is there to guide him when things go wrong.
While we get a real insight into the dynamics and relationships between the people detailed above, Judith remains enigmatic and somewhat on the edge of it all. She seems to have a much more difficult relationship with her father than her brothers do, and perhaps the very fact that we see relatively little of her is a subtle way of showing her position within the family. However, it is frustrating that she is the narrative voice but we only get tiny fragments of her thoughts and feelings, and rarely get to meet her the way we might like to. Of course, this is a documentary, so the filmmakers have to work with what is really happening, but Judith seems like such a central part of the family, and yet it is very difficult to get to know her. With Naty in Spain, the Peruvian side of the story centres very much around the men, leaving Judith as a quiet voice in the background. Whether this was a deliberate decision on the part of the filmmakers or not, the result is slightly jarring.
However, this is a small flaw in an otherwise excellent documentary. It ends without really concluding, and there are none of the usual endnotes to tell you what is happening now, but the film makes no apologies for this and it would actually make it feel a bit contrived. This is an honest and frank picture of one family. It is merely a snapshot of life, but it gives us unparalleled access to a world we otherwise would never know.
As brief and as fleeting as one of Naty’s phone calls, it is equally just as precious. It will make you reassess your own values and the things that are important in life. One family’s story with a universal message, Familia is a documentary which makes you think. KS
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