Awards

As a jury we would like to recognise the bravery of Paul-Julien Robert for taking us on such a personal journey with My Fathers, My Mother & Me. It is a thought- provoking and disturbing film, intimate whilst also raising larger questions of power, parental responsibility and abuse. The incredible archive footage combined with the personal journey of a mother and son left us disturbed, angry and feeling that this is a film that deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

Paul never had a small family. In the Seventies, his mother considered that to be a false way of life, so she moved into Otto Mühl's infamous artist commune in Burgenland, where Paul was brought up bereft of any conventional family relationships. Twenty years after the end of an experiment that promised cultural freedom and exercised social totalitarianism, the filmmaker sets about confronting his past - through a content that is unsparing, but a form that is carefully considered and highly intelligent filmicly. In doing so, he also confronts his mother, whom he allows space for reflection. The combination of meetings with former inhabitants of the commune - other children to whom he still has a strong relationship, but also possible fathers - and alarmingly abundant archive material (which becomes evidence) is to the point, dramatically as well as psychologically. Paul-Julien Robert has succeeded in creating a compelling and mature documentary film, because he preserves his artistic composure amid all the personal tragedy.