Your Mum and Dad

Klaartje Quirijns, 2019

Runtime 77 minutes

‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to but they do.’

The beginning of this poem by Philip Larkin goes to the heart of the questions Klaartje Quirijns asks in her new film. Twenty years ago, she lived in New York and began filming her boyfriend Michael Moskowitz in the most intimate place: in the therapy room with psychoanalyst Kirkland Vaughans. After years of recording this process, she was touched in an existential way by a diagnosis in her chest in 2012. She decided to point the camera at herself, her family and an undiscussed trauma. In the film, she explores the powerful dynamics of her own family relationships and the way her life has been shaped by them.

At the same time, as we struggle with the present, we are not always able to cope with the traumas of the past. This film addresses universal themes for anyone wondering how to deal with family, secrets and life itself.