Into Dad's Woods / La forêt de mon père

NO LONGER RENTABLE

Click here a watch our interview with Director Véro Cratzborn.

15-yr-old Gina, the eldest of three siblings, is daughter of Carole, who works as a cleaner for rich folks, and Jimmy, a nature-lover who has just lost his job as a forester and whose idiosyncratic behaviour provokes the ridicule of the surly local youths. Gina fiercely defends her father, whom she adores, and he returns the favour when necessary. The bond between them is unbreakable, but when Jimmy’s behaviour veers uncomfortably close to endangering the safety of his entire family Carole takes action that threatens their integrity in quite a different way.

Into Dad’s Woods is a film about a loving and loved father whose quirky eccentricities are fast degenerating into full-on psychosis. It achieves a subtle balance between confronting the problem squarely and denying it exists by mediating the experience of a man’s mental deterioration through the eyes of his spirited adolescent daughter. Director Véro Cratzborn, one-time assistant to Léos Carax, comments ‘I grew up amidst mental illness, this strange affliction from which my father has always suffered. Living with someone who was mentally ill was my normal. So, the seeds of this story came from personal experience.’

‘The character of her film comes to life in the chiseled psychology of its characters and the mastery of the subject which she successfully directs towards a lively tension and a muted emotion. Her first fiction essay is an example of rigour, authenticity and writing.’ - Frédéric Mignard, CinéDweller.

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