Knowing that Lynne has been working on this film for 26 years, it’s easy to wonder why she doesn’t come to a more definitive conclusion about who her father is or what family means for her and her siblings.
The film is generous in its portrayal of Sachs’ father and achingly vulnerable in its attempt to make sense of the wake of affection and resentment he has left behind. Sachs takes a story that could have been overly dramatic and judgmental and instead constructs a nuanced meditation on what it feels like to love someone whose actions have hurt us and others.
As women in the director’s chair or anywhere else on a set, we should celebrate the bonds we build together behind the camera.
Documentaries are often that idea that what you see is not what you will get in the end and in a way because of the brave way in which Lynne chooses to put herself out there, comfortable or not, we really see a 4th wall crash that presents such a compelling and shocking result.
There are numerous shots of family members filming other relatives; at one point, Lynne is filming Ira Jr. filming Ira Sr. while watching home movies on the television.
Video Interview: Lynne Sachs discusses “Film About a Father Who” with Joe Compton at the 2020 Slamdance Film Festival.
To say that Ira Sachs Sr. is an interesting character would be an understatement. He is the perfect leading man for a cinematic oeuvre like ‘Film About a Father Who’.
Film About a Father Who” (on Tuesday and Feb. 14), shown at the parallel event Slamdance, is actually partly set in that ski town; in it, the filmmaker Lynne Sachs creates a layered cinematic essay about being the daughter of the “Hugh Hefner of Park City.”
To celebrate the press’s 30th birthday and the publication of the new Tender Omnibus collection, Greenlight hosts a night of reading and conversation featuring three Tender Buttons poets.
Also arriving in New York straight from Park City is Film About a Father Who,which opened this year’s Slamdance. Director Lynne Sachs says that it “bears witness to the familial tensions that arose from my attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings, some of whom I have known all their lives, others I only recently discovered.”
