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Your Mum and Dad: A Devastating Truth

Documentary in which the director follows a friend undergoing therapy to unravel the impact of his parents on his life, before moving on to explore how her own family's past has affected hers.

In this documentary, Dutch film director Klaartje Quirijns originally set out to document therapy. She was interested in the sessions of a friend, Michael Moskowitz, who was unravelling a lifetime of family trauma inherited from the legacies of World War II. In these rarely filmed sessions, led by esteemed American psychotherapist Kirkland Vaughans, Klaartje begins to understand that all lived experience is shaped through the lives of our parents.

In the ultimate display of vulnerability, Klaartje then decides to turn the camera on herself, beginning a journey to unravel her own family secrets. She traces the lineage of her story across three generations – her mother, herself and now her two daughters. Meanwhile, Vaughans continues to guide viewers through the complexities of the mind, showing how easy it is to become colonised by the behaviour of our parents.

With the use of intimate family footage and diary filming, Klaartje takes us on a journey that many will find familiar and familial. Inspired by Philip Larkin’s famed poem This Be the Verse, with its famous expletive-laden refrain about parents, this is a nurturing exploration of the powerful dynamics found within family relationships and the ways in which they shape our lives.

5 months left to watch

1 hour, 12 minutes

Last on

Tue 10 May 2022 22:00
±«Óãtv Four

Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • 00:05

    Mingus Big Band

    Moanin'

  • 00:07

    Jean Sablon

    Seul (Alone)

Credit

Director Klaartje Quirijns

Broadcast

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