Family (2001, documentary) - An intimate personal search for roots powerfully captured

♥♥♥♥♥

A DVD cover for Phie Ambo and Sami Saif's Family shows a man raising from the sea in a cry

Filmed by his girlfriend, this is the story of Sami Saif's search for his roots; first and foremost his father, who left his family in Denmark, when Sami was 8 years old, after which his mother fell waste to alcoholism and his brother committed suicide.

Family portrays an exciting journey and is made by Phie Ambo (Free the Mind (2012), documentary) and her partner Sami Saif (Paradis (2009), documentary). It is rife with emotions, and it becomes especially meaningful, when Saif meets his big brother in Yemen. But as Saif and at least I as a Danish viewer realized; he is a Dane, mostly, although the physical similarities with his Arabian family are striking.
Family is a liberating and extremely fine documentary of personal, highly intimate identity exploration.

In lieu of anything related to this documentary, which is not immediately to be found at Youtube, here is a trailer for a later documentary by Ambo called Free the Mind

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown (but appears to have been a theatrical flop)
[Family premiered 9 November (Denmark) and runs 90 minutes. The film sold 2,346 tickets in its production country Denmark. It was shown at a handful of European and North-American film festivals and also had a general release in the Netherlands. There is nothing to indicate that it could possibly be anything but a theatrical flop of some sort. It won an AFI Fest award, a Bodil award nomination and a Robert award (Denmark's Oscar) for Best Documentary. Ambo returned with documentary short Growing Up in a Day (2002) and theatrically with Nicolas Winding Refn bio-documentary Gambler (2006). Saif returned with documentary Dogville Confessions (2003). 166 IMDb users have given Family a 7.6/10 average rating.]

What do you think of Family?