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Lucy Kerr’s vivisection of suburban naïveté, Family Portrait, opens with what could be a television advertisement for heart medication. Somewhere in Texas, late summer or early fall, a family meanders in a languid long take down to the riverbank to have their photograph taken for a Christmas card—three generations dressed in clean, bright clothes, flashing each other adoring smiles, the children weaving around the adults.

Except that this vision of togetherness, belonging, normality, comfort, is rendered unreal by the muted soundtrack, muddying the family’s dialogue past the point of intelligibility. As they all crowd into the frame, the adults corralling the children and forcing them into incongruous Santa hats, their voices become more distinct, and the scene abruptly cuts off. Not with the expected freeze frame of a camera flash, but before the family has struck a pose.

The rest of Family Portrait takes place at the...

One of the most acclaimed debuts at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival was writer/director Lucy Kerr’s debut “Family Portrait,” a disquieting drama about a family gathering where the matriarch goes missing. Kerr won the Boccalino d’Oro for Best Director at the Swiss festival. Now, Brooklyn-based indie distribution outfit Factory 25 has acquired worldwide rights to the film, with a theatrical run set to begin at New York City’s Metrograph on June 28. Further engagements and a digital release to follow. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.

Set at the dawn of Covid, “Family Portrait” follows Katy as she searches for the mother who can’t be found, the film weaving from one member of the family to another. The idyllic summer day setting descends into a more surreal environment as everyone starts to lose their sense of time and place. Kerr uses intimate Steadicam cinematography to blur...

“Write about what you know,” the saying goes, and the same rule of thumb often applies to independent movies, with many a debuting filmmaker turning the camera on their own lives and families to create their first dramas. Such features as Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha, Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun and even Ari Aster’s Hereditary are prime examples of the genre, and there are surely countless others.

Writer-director Lucy Kerr’s Family Portrait could be added to that list, except there’s a catch: If there’s drama, it exists somewhere beneath the surface, in a movie that’s filled with anxiety and foreboding without ever showcasing much of a plot. There is, in fact, a bare-bones narrative about a family coming together for their annual group photo — per the press notes, this happens just before the start of the Covid pandemic — but Kerr is less...

“Family Portrait,” written and directed by Lucy Kerr, has debuted its trailer ahead of its world premiere in Locarno Film Festival’s Cineasti Del Presente section. World sales are being handled by Flavio Armone at Lights On.

“Family Portrait” follows a sprawling family on a morning when they have planned a group picture. After the mother disappears and one of the daughters becomes increasingly anxious to find her and take the picture, the rest of the family appears to resist any attempt to gather.

“Initially presenting itself as a realistic portrayal of a family on an idle but hectic summer day, the film progressively descends into a realm where time and space lose their grip, transforming the family portrait into a solemn and enigmatic ritual of transition,” according to a press statement.

In a statement, the director said: “In ‘Family Portrait,’ the family denies the collective mourning experience, and thus,...

How tragic! A young girl died in her brother’s car after she was left in the car while he went to class. The freshman was found by her older siblings after a full day of classes.

14-year-old Graciela Martinez was found dead in her brother’s car on Sept. 11 after being locked in the hot vehicle all day outside of Madera South High School in California. The teen overheated in the car, which had faulty locks and a non-functioning horn.

14-Year-Old Girl Dies In Hot Car At California High School

Graciela’s brother explained that he left her in the car when he went to his first at 6:40 a.m. because her first class was not until 7:40 a.m. Investigators believe that she was sleeping in the car when her brother left. She had no cell phone, water, or food with her in the car.

The heat...

There used to be a section in the 2008 Air Force personnel manual that dealt with UFOs. The Huffington Post asked why this section was in the manual, and days later, the section was taken out. Why? Not sure. Apparently, The Huffington Post was inquiring about something they–and the rest of us–can’t know about. Add this to your UFO conspiracy theories, pro-ufo people. According to the site, the section being deleted from the manual is interesting enough, but even more interesting is that the American government officially ended their UFO investigations in 1969 with Project Blue Book’s end. Former Air Force Captain Robert Salas, who is a believer in UFOs,...

Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Sci-Fi, Cinematical

Over the past 100-plus years of Hollywood moviemaking, audiences have seen countless depictions of what humankind might do in response to an extraterrestrial encounter -- greet visitors with gunfire, give them Reese's Pieces, upload a virus into their Mac-compatible mainframe, sneeze on them, etc. The industry's latest alien invasion movie, 'Battle: Los Angeles,' arrives in theaters this week, and director Jonathan Liebesman took the unusual approach of trying to show how civilians and military personnel might actually respond in the event of an attack.

At the Los Angeles press day for the film, Cinematical spoke to two military experts, Capt. Robert Salas, and Col. Charles Hart, both of whom experienced actual UFO encounters, and they offered their opinions about the film's authenticity. Additionally, the duo revealed a few details about how the government might respond should extraterrestrials descend upon the planet, and interestingly,...

Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Sci-Fi, Cinematical

Over the past 100-plus years of Hollywood moviemaking, audiences have seen countless depictions of what humankind might do in response to an extraterrestrial encounter -- greet visitors with gunfire, give them Reese's Pieces, upload a virus into their Mac-compatible mainframe, sneeze on them, etc. The industry's latest alien invasion movie, 'Battle: Los Angeles,' arrives in theaters this week, and director Jonathan Liebesman took the unusual approach of trying to show how civilians and military personnel might actually respond in the event of an attack.

At the Los Angeles press day for the film, Cinematical spoke to two military experts, Capt. Robert Salas, and Col. Charles Hart, both of whom experienced actual UFO encounters, and they offered their opinions about the film's authenticity. Additionally, the duo revealed a few details about how the government might respond should extraterrestrials descend upon the planet, and interestingly,...

The Battle of Los Angeles, which took place during the night between February 24th and 25th in 1942, is one of the strangest events of World War II and is still a mystery to this day. When unidentified objects were reported over Los Angeles, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing anti-aircraft shells at them, as they moved from Santa Monica to Long Beach, but none of the shells were able to actually hit. Originally thought to be Japanese bombers who had come to attack the United States after Pearl Harbor, to this day, nobody has ever been able to explain what happened, and there continues to be documented cases of UFO sightings around the world. The new sci-fi/action film Battle: Los Angeles, opening on March 11th, takes things one step further and shows what could happen if UFO sightings became a terrifying reality when Earth is attacked by unknown forces.