The movie
La Mif
A group of teenage girls have been placed in a residential care home with social workers. This forced \"family\" experience creates unexpected tensions and intimacies. An incident triggers a chain of over-reaction
Length: 110 min
Country: Switzerland
Language spoken: French
Language subtitles: Dutch
Cast: Claudia Grob, Anaïs Uldry, Kassia Da Costa, Joyce Esther Ndayisenga, Charlie Areddy
Director: Fred Baillif
Release date: 2021
Description
For two years, writer-director Fred Baillif, a former social worker, workshopped this slice-of-life drama about kids in a residential home for at-risk teens with the staff and residents of a real residential home—and then made them the stars of this hard-hitting and deeply felt docudrama. The title is French slang for “the family” and that sums up the multiple storylines and dramas on display, all of which are anchored in an alternately profoundly caring and very difficult reality faced by the residents and staff alike. And the performances elicited by Baillif are extraordinary.
‘The film’s non-professional cast play characters who, if not specifically based on themselves, are rooted in their shared stories and experiences. The result is remarkable: powered by skittering, unpredictable energy and adolescent emotional eruptions, it’s a smartly structured portrait of a de facto family unit, and the tensions that tear through it.’—Wendy Ide, The Observer
‘The film’s non-professional cast play characters who, if not specifically based on themselves, are rooted in their shared stories and experiences. The result is remarkable: powered by skittering, unpredictable energy and adolescent emotional eruptions, it’s a smartly structured portrait of a de facto family unit, and the tensions that tear through it.’—Wendy Ide, The Observer
