Capturing the Friedmans
A suburban family is torn apart when the father and a son face child abuse charges, told through the home movies the family filmed as it collapsed.
Sundance Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize, Documentary, 2003
A respected suburban schoolteacher and his teenage son are arrested on child abuse charges, and the family films itself through the arrests, the plea decisions, and its own disintegration. The documentary sets that home footage against later interviews in which participants and investigators tell sharply conflicting versions of what happened.
The film becomes a study of memory, denial, and the stories a family tells to hold itself together, leaving the viewer unsure where the truth lies. It gives a clinician a case study in suggestibility and the fantasy a family maintains about itself. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.
Details
- 2003
- United States
- English
- Documentary