FAMILY MEALS

“We never, ever talked about anything!” The director’s four-strong family has come together to celebrate a double birthday. Once they sit down to eat the filmmaker finds words to express emotions she has kept silent about up to now, and at first the table-talk revolves round the daughter’s coming-out. However, deeper injuries are soon aired, with feelings of being misunderstood, alienated, emerging alongside jealousy and anger. What remains, at the end, is the hope that this process of cleansing and healing the past also opens up a path to a more honest future. FAMILY MEALS is a film about acceptance, about the need to feel accepted by one’s closest relatives. Dana Budisavljević’s remarkably frank autobiographical documentary at the same time encourages the viewer to examine their own family histories, to look for the taboos and traumas that lurk underneath their own kitchen tables.