My second film of this year's festival was the Danish film That Time of Year, directed by and starring Paprika Steen as Katrine, the mother/daughter/sister/wife who is hosting Christmas dinner for her normal but dysfunctional family. Just about everyone attending (her kids, her divorced parents, her sisters and their spouses and children) has one issue or another, and most of them have issues with each other, all of which come out over the course of the evening with some no-holds-barred conflict.
There are issues that have been repeated every year, issues that have been buried and come to the surface, and new issues that arise and surprise some of the characters. The film shows how families mix love and hate for each other, but than in the end our family is our family and we cannot, and do not want to escape from one another no matter what is going on. The film was set in a foreign country, spoken in a foreign language (Danish with subtitles), focused on a holiday and rituals that are mostly foreign to me, but none of that mattered, and the underlying themes and emotions still resonated with me, even though my family is way more "normal" than Katrine's. Good film.
TIFF 2018 Overview
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