“A Family”, interview with director Christine Angot

February 24, 2024

Christine Angot, director of A Family, on her cinematic journey to finally face her family on their silence about the incest she had to experience.

“A Family”, interview with director Christine Angot Chiara Nicoletti

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After talking about it in her book, “L’Inceste” (Stock), which made her a renowned writer, Christine Angot decided to embark on a cinematic journey, a documentary, “A family – Une Famille“, in the Encounters competition at the 74th Berlinale, where she decided to confront her family and that of her father, now deceased and guilty of incest, about how they have dealt ( or not dealt at all) with the situation.

With the help of her director of photography and friend, Caroline Champetier, while on a book tour in Strasbourg, she decided to finally talk to her family while being shot on camera. This is how “A family“, her debut film was born.

Christine Angot accompanies us through her cinematic and personal journey and explains how the shame she has felt her whole life since the incest, went away in the moment she decided to first write and then direct her story.

The pages of her book and the images of her film were there to testify her pain and the violence she had to suffer.

Plot

Award-winning French writer Christine Angot is invited for business to Strasbourg where her father had lived and died several years ago. It’s the city where she met him at the age of 13 for the first time, and he started to rape her. His wife and children still live there.
Angot takes a camera, and knocks on her family’s doors to push them for clarity about their attitudes to her father’s crime that lasted so many years. A cinematographic journey challenging social norms and family perspectives in dealing with incest.

Written by: Chiara Nicoletti

A family Berlinale