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Family Portrait.“You can’t always trust photographs,” may just be one line out of many in Lucy Kerr’s decisively polyphonous Family Portrait (2023). It is also a meta-statement encapsulating the film’s source of narrative tensions—that glaze of artificiality over every family portrait ever taken. Kerr’s debut feature stars Deragh Campbell as the protagonist, Katy. She and her boyfriend, Olek (Chris Galust), are the youngest couple in Katy’s big family—not to mention unmarried and childless—which makes them undeclared outsiders. There is no dramatic reason for them to be so eager to leave the holiday home, and yet they should get going. It’s late morning. The breakfast is lavish, with just the right amount of chaotic buzz. Olek is tasked with taking a family portrait, which will become this year’s Christmas card, but something feels off. Tensions mount as whispers of a recently...

“I thought about The Exterminating Angel,” Lucy Kerr says over coffee as she describes the origins of Family Portrait, her hypnotic feature debut. Indeed, the film’s central conceit hews closely to Luis Buñuel’s 1962 satire, but instead of posh partygoers being inexplicably stuck in a single room, an extended Texas family is unable to get everyone to gather for the titular photo. In particular, Katie’s (Deragh Campbell) pleas for everyone to assemble are frustratingly ignored or otherwise thwarted, especially when the family matriarch (Silvana Jakich) is suddenly nowhere to be found. Wandering around the vast property in search of her […]

The post “Suspense Comes From Air Conditioning”: Lucy Kerr on Family Portrait first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“I thought about The Exterminating Angel,” Lucy Kerr says over coffee as she describes the origins of Family Portrait, her hypnotic feature debut. Indeed, the film’s central conceit hews closely to Luis Buñuel’s 1962 satire, but instead of posh partygoers being inexplicably stuck in a single room, an extended Texas family is unable to get everyone to gather for the titular photo. In particular, Katie’s (Deragh Campbell) pleas for everyone to assemble are frustratingly ignored or otherwise thwarted, especially when the family matriarch (Silvana Jakich) is suddenly nowhere to be found. Wandering around the vast property in search of her […]

The post “Suspense Comes From Air Conditioning”: Lucy Kerr on Family Portrait first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Lucy Kerr’s vivisection of suburban naïveté, Family Portrait, opens with what could be a television advertisement for heart medication. Somewhere in Texas, late summer or early fall, a family meanders in a languid long take down to the riverbank to have their photograph taken for a Christmas card—three generations dressed in clean, bright clothes, flashing each other adoring smiles, the children weaving around the adults.

Except that this vision of togetherness, belonging, normality, comfort, is rendered unreal by the muted soundtrack, muddying the family’s dialogue past the point of intelligibility. As they all crowd into the frame, the adults corralling the children and forcing them into incongruous Santa hats, their voices become more distinct, and the scene abruptly cuts off. Not with the expected freeze frame of a camera flash, but before the family has struck a pose.

The rest of Family Portrait takes place at the...

One of the most acclaimed debuts at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival was writer/director Lucy Kerr’s debut “Family Portrait,” a disquieting drama about a family gathering where the matriarch goes missing. Kerr won the Boccalino d’Oro for Best Director at the Swiss festival. Now, Brooklyn-based indie distribution outfit Factory 25 has acquired worldwide rights to the film, with a theatrical run set to begin at New York City’s Metrograph on June 28. Further engagements and a digital release to follow. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.

Set at the dawn of Covid, “Family Portrait” follows Katy as she searches for the mother who can’t be found, the film weaving from one member of the family to another. The idyllic summer day setting descends into a more surreal environment as everyone starts to lose their sense of time and place. Kerr uses intimate Steadicam cinematography to blur...

“Family Portrait,” written and directed by Lucy Kerr, has debuted its trailer ahead of its world premiere in Locarno Film Festival’s Cineasti Del Presente section. World sales are being handled by Flavio Armone at Lights On.

“Family Portrait” follows a sprawling family on a morning when they have planned a group picture. After the mother disappears and one of the daughters becomes increasingly anxious to find her and take the picture, the rest of the family appears to resist any attempt to gather.

“Initially presenting itself as a realistic portrayal of a family on an idle but hectic summer day, the film progressively descends into a realm where time and space lose their grip, transforming the family portrait into a solemn and enigmatic ritual of transition,” according to a press statement.

In a statement, the director said: “In ‘Family Portrait,’ the family denies the collective mourning experience, and thus,...

"When I walked inside the home, I felt them there..." Check out this official trailer for an indie, low budget psychological thriller titled What Happened at 625 River Road?, marking the feature debut of director Devon Jovi Johnson. This is currently set to debut later in the summer in 2022, if anyone is curious about it. The film follows two female students who head to rural New York. As they arrive at their rental home, 625 River Rd, a chain of mysterious events take place that are still unsolved to this day. Starring Francheska Pujols, Summer Foley, Silvana Jakich, Piotr Marzecki, and Matrell Smith. This looks much better than most low budget indie horror creations, with some clever shots and very creepy moments shown here. Here's the first trailer for Devon Jovi Johnson's What Happened at 625 River Road?, from YouTube: A psychological thriller, based on true events that occurred, following two female students to New York.

The 11th annual Coney Island Film Festival, running Sept. 23-25, offers an exquisite blend of freak show, burlesque and cinematic oddities, featuring movies about reformed gang members, unwitting superheroes, rock ‘n’ roll heaven and tons and tons of short films.

The fest opens with the portrait of a real-life Coney Island badass, Keith Suber, a reformed gang member who now teaches kids that violence isn’t the solution to their problems in the documentary The Last Immortal, directed by Charles Denson.

However, the highlight of the festival — in Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film’s opinion — is the headbangin’ documentary Heavy Metal Picnic by Jeff Krulik and John Heyn, which beautifully relives the glory days of ’80s era rock ‘n’ roll Maryland in all its raucous glory. Featuring footage from an outrageous backwoods farm concert and a reunion among its (slightly) more mature participants. Read the official Bad Lit documentary review here.