SYNOPSIS

To understand why he cannot talk with his mother about family issues, director Paul embarks on a search for answers in her past. After ten years of no contact, he reaches out again to his grandmother, uncles, and aunts, hoping to gain insight into the complex relationship with his mother. Through archival material, phone calls, and intimate interviews, Paul reconstructs the story of his mother’s family. Gradually, he realises that silence and avoidance are deeply rooted. His grandmother once struggled with what were referred to as “moods,” a subject the family has long refused to address. Only by pressing further does Paul begin to suspect these were signs of mental health problems. His mother, too, faced such struggles, which eventually led Paul to distance himself from her for more than five years. In uneasy and sometimes painful conversations, Paul uncovers how denial has become the family’s default response. He recognises his own retreat from his mother as part of this same pattern. Yet through confronting the silence, he arrives at a new understanding: that he must attempt to break the cycle in order to free himself from the past. Whether such a rupture is truly possible remains an open question.

GÉNÉRIQUE

• Director

  Hylkema Paul

• Production

  Janine Liang

• Referent

  Hylkema Paul

• Sales

  Rik Kornman

• Sound designer

  Luc Boymans

• Animation

  Finn van der Reijden

• Editing

  Hylkema Paul

• Camera

  Jan Roelfs

• Sound Editing

  Jan Verburg

• Film score composer

  Pablo González Cardona

• Sound Mixing

  George Ammerlaan