- Familia. Directors: Alberto Herskovits and Mikael Wistrom (Sweden, 2010).Tuesday, March 13 at 7: 30 p.m. Rating: 9 (out of 10)
FAMILIA takes us deep into the trials and tribulations of a poverty-stricken Peruvian family forced to separate to survive.
Despite their hardscrabble existence Natividad and Daniel Barrientos managed to keep their family together for more than three decades before circumstances dictated differently.
Swedish filmmaker Mikael Wistrom first met the couple in 1974 while they were scouring through garbage landfill in the suburbs of Lima with their baby daughter Sandra. Still photographs of that meeting, shown in Familia, capture the young family going through garbage on a cold winter afternoon and posing for their new European friend.
They developed a relationship with Wistrom and when he returned to Lima in 1991 he asked if he could document the Barrientos' life.
The full-length work, Familia, is the third and last instalment in a series of films shot over the past two decades. It is not necessary to have seen the other works as Familia is a self-contained story of what happens to the Barrientos family when 55-year-old Nati is forced to take a job in Madrid, Spain.
Knowing his subjects for such a long time allows Wistrom and his partner Herskovits to get up close and personal with the Barrientos.
The camera follows the family as Nati prepares to leave for a housekeeping job in Europe leaving her husband Daniel, at home with their eight-year-old son Nata as well as Judith, a grown daughter and Dani, a grown son with a wife and child of his own.
In one of the last moments before Nati heads off for what will be an initial two-year stint in Spain Daniel asks his wife "Do you really love me?" with the rest of the film documenting how the family copes with the unwanted separation.
The brilliant, soulful Familia has won many awards since it was first released in 2010.
