Zona Sur (Southern District) (2009)

“Suda Sur” is a film presenting a wealthy family in financial and moral decline in a city where financial differences between people are striking. The children of the family, each on its own way, question the environment they are raised and living. The bigger son spending his time having sex with his girlfriend, throwing the family’s money out the window, helplessly lost in his whims. His younger sister, trying to define its own path but not strong enough to do it. The youngest brother, just a five-year old trying to understand the world he lives in, touching the essence of life.

The ending, although visible by everyone –  as portrayed by showing each and everyone in a separate room, hands against the glass window, looking outside – stirs no one into action: they all remain prisoners of the situation, unable to move towards a solution. The only exception, the five-year old on the roof of the house, still free by the wings of its imagination.

My rating: 06/10

En Familie (A Family) (2010)

What is more important? Having a baby with the person you love or have the dream of your life time come through? Have your dream come through or support a person that brought you to this world and gave whatever was possible to bring your life to the point it is now? How far and for how long may one go forward with obligation till his inner being says that this cannot go on anymore? What does it mean to a person the fact that, whatever him and his ancestors struggled for a lifetime will be lost in the midst of time despite what he wished for? What is companionship and sharing one’s life? What is important for oneself and what for one’s companion? How does one deal with loss? How does one deal with the ultimate loss all of us humans face?

These questions and many more are thoroughly explored in a realistic, sensitive, humane, intelligent way in the film of the writer and director Pernille Fischer Christensen , “En Famiile”.

It is not a film that will cheer you up. It is a film that will make you wonder how a director managed to say so many things in such a short time frame with such intimacy. The answer may be that this is why cinema is the 7^th art! Do not miss it.

My rating: 09/10