family drama - FilmRoot

Eva (Honduras) – LALIFF 2026

Eva Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

Whilst the drama of Eva is kicked off by tragedy, the film never feels tragic. This is an immensely warm-hearted film which breaks traditional gender roles by casting Endry Cardeño, a trans-woman, as Eva, a grandma forced to take care of her granddaughter. As per the idiom; “it takes a village to raise a child,” we find a small tight-knit community in Tegucigalpa, the largest city in Central America, instead of one of the murder capitals of the world.

From: Honduras, North America
Watch: IMDb
Next: The Awakening of the Ants, Amor y Frijoles, La Yuma

Eva Breakdown

In Eva, a trans-woman takes care of her granddaughter after the sudden death of her daughter-in-law. While processing grief, she tries to help her son connect emotionally to his daughter. Amid tensions, reproaches, and silence, Eva and her son embark on separate paths towards the reconstruction of their family bond and place within their community.

The combination of tragedy and tight-knit family and community make Eva a heart-warming addition to the Central American ‘hood film’ genre. Like the first ‘hood films’ from Los Angeles, such as Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, and along the lines of Amor Y Frijoles and La Yuma, Eva centers on the experiences of characters growing up in under-served communities in urban environments. It shows that community bonds are the key to surviving through tragic realities of the city in the face of limited government support. For Eva, there’s no evidence of public support for her adoption of her daughter-in-law. Instead, she builds connections with her in-laws, family, lovers, and customers, to turn the overwhelming city into a warm, mellow community.

It’s also wonderful to see nontraditional gender roles integrated so naturally in Eva. By casting Endry Cardeño as a trans, single grandmother, director William Reyes, normalizes trans people on film, trans people in family roles, and trans people as grandparents (especially pertinent as the life expectancy of trans-women in Tegucigalpa is just 32 according to the director William Reyes).

Look out for Eva‘s release in the coming months to catch a tender, poignant film that centers on family and community navigating tragedy.

Head to our LALIFF 2026 festival Hub for more reviews from LALIFF 2026.

Feed Me With Your Words – A Multi-Layered Brooding Mystery

Feed Me With Your Words Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Why Watch Feed Me With Your Words?

If you like brooding family dramas
To follow the mystery of a missing son
For a film that plays into gender stereotypes

From: Slovenia, Europe
Watch: Trailer, JustWatch, Amazon Prime, Hoopla
Next: Stitches, The Last of Us, By A Sharp Knife

My Little Sister – AFI Fest 2020

My Little Sister starts with two protagonists: Lisa and Sven. They’re twins, and evidently very close. Even when they’re shot apart, as in the opening scene, they’re still connected – it’s a shot of Lisa giving blood followed by a shot of Sven sleeping alone in a sanitized hospital room. She’s giving her blood to help him fight cancer.

Over the first half of the movie, the camera follows Lisa and Sven equally. However, the narrative balance between them becomes more lopsided as the film progresses. Coinciding with Sven’s deteriorating health, Lisa takes up more and more screen time. The movie becomes less about how Sven copes with cancer and more about how Lisa deals with it. Whilst it confirms his physical end, her assumption of the film’s focus also represents her inheriting Sven’s spirit. She takes on Sven’s stage presence (he was known for being a charismatic stage actor) and assumes some of his characteristics. She becomes more independent and creative than she appears at the beginning of the film.

One example of Lisa’s change is in her marital relationship. After she takes Sven abroad to her home in Switzerland, she starts questioning her life with her husband Martin. He’s a symbol of the soft patriarchy that has frozen her in a place she doesn’t want to be. She has compromised her creative career to move to a remote Swiss town for his advancement, but got no support in return. Instead of considering a return to Berlin with Lisa, Martin mansplains that living as a housewife abroad is in Lisa’s best interests. Her role for him is to fulfill his ‘happy family’ image at work functions. Lisa’s revolt against his soft patriarchy is triggered by the arrival of Sven. He’s a reminder of her previous ambitions that have been forgotten in her nuclear family life abroad.

There’s no doubt that My Little Sister is a sad family drama. The only respite seems to come from the classical opera music that replaces diegetic sound in and following the most hopeless scenes. However, looking at it positively, we follow a character that inherits the freedom to become a more independent character. So if you can brave a film featuring an intimate relationship with a relative fighting cancer, you’ll be able to appreciate My Little Sister.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

Rival (Rivale) – AFI Fest 2020

Rival starts with death. There’s the first opening flash forward featuring a shot of Roma, a approximately 9 year old boy, grabbing a gun in answer to someone knocking at the door. Then there’s the second opening with Roman burying a dead bird before attending an older relative’s funeral. It’s an ominous sign of things to come. It’s clear Rival is not going to be an upbeat family drama.

Before there’s time to grieve, Roman is bundled into the back of a van and taken to Germany to live with his mother. She’s been in Germany taking care of an elderly woman (who has recently passed away) as an undocumented worker. Problem for Roman is that the older woman’s widow is survived by her partner Gert, an old German man that has fallen in love with his mum. Roman has to compete with Gert for his mother’s love.

The relationships between Roman and his Mum, and Roman and Gert are pretty all of nothing. They’re either hyper energetically playful: chasing each other around the house laughing and pulling faces, or they’re shouting and roaring at each other. It reminded me a bit of the similarly high energy relationship between the mother and son in Xavier Dolan’s Mommy. It just feels like something is going to go badly wrong, like when Roman tries to poison Gert by spiking his afternoon tea.

Their uneasy relationships are complemented by the elements of the horror genre that are intertwined into the images. There’s Gert’s sinister eyebrows (that are a bit like Nosferatu’s Dracula) and the shots of him being injected with insulin. Then there’s the moving door handle at night when Roman is sleeping with his mum (a door which is later locked to subdue Roman). The eerie music, which features plenty of high piano notes, underscores the influence of horror on Rival, positioning Gert as the pretty unpredictable and untrustworthy villain.

If you’re looking for a bleak family drama which promises many things that go horribly wrong, check out Rival. You’re guaranteed to find something depressingly shocking.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.

Hand of Fate – One Family Ripped Apart by Marriage Customs

Hand of Fate Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

In Hand of Fate, an underage girl is forced by her father to quit school and marry a man she doesn’t know living abroad. This greed-driven marriage splits their family unit as the patriarchy threatens to ruin another girls life.

From: The Gambia, Africa
Watch: YouTube, IMDb
Next: Mustang, Flesh Out, Dakan

Hand of Fate – Breakdown

Disclaimer: to get something out of watching Hand of Fate you’ll have to first ignore the audio quality. The volume of the dialogue and background noise chops and changes with the cuts making it hard to consistently hear what the characters are saying. Whilst this might not be too problematic for an action film like Who Killed Captain Alex? it doesn’t help this film which relies heavily on its dialogue.

If you can ignore the changes in audio quality, you’ll find a pretty entertaining family feud. At its best, the conspiring brother corrupting the once honorable father into selling his daughter’s hand in marriage is classic drama. It captures the father’s fall from respecting his wife after she gives birth to their first child, and promising a much better future for their daughter, to him reneging on his promises because of the cunning words of his money-grubbing brother. The father clearly isn’t the best bloke, but it’s fun watching him be swayed one way then the other between his brother (like the devil on his shoulder encouraging him to sell his daughter for wealth) and his wife and daughter (who he doesn’t really trust because he’s the man of the house – so what can a woman tell him). There’s enough drama to keep most viewers entertained.

That being said, there are a few conspicuous moments in which the director/producers slip in some educational messages. There’s a scene where one character gives another a mobile phone, and the gifter starts going on about how they shouldn’t drive whilst using their mobile phone. There’s another where a character suffers from a disease and a doctor arrives to berate them for not getting vaccinated when the state medics came to their town to offer it. It’s clear these kinds of messages are added to support government messaging – don’t use your mobile phone whilst driving – and – get vaccinated – and their obviousness disrupts the flow of the narrative. Hand of Fate also manages to sneak in a lot of current themes too, with European Migration, Female Circumcision, and Equal Education each playing a part in the script. These fit the script more naturally than the government messaging, but it still feels like the producers might have had a checklist for adding all these different topics to the story.

Hand of Fate is worth a watch if you’re able to overlook the audio quality and government messaging. It is a low-budget movie – clear from the quality of the production, setting, and acting – so it’s worth going into the movie not expecting much. However, once you get past all of that, you might be able to enjoy the heaps of drama and family feuding.

What to Watch Next

For more family drama featuring more forced marriages, watch Mustang from Turkey. It’s pretty upbeat for the most part, but not without a lingering melancholy that represents their fate in the hands of the patriarchy. For more films featuring forced marriages try Sand Storm, set within a Beddouin tribe in Southern Israel and Saudi Runaway, a personal documentary of one woman trying to escape hers.

For more controversial marriages, you could also try Flesh Out from Mauritania, featuring the dangerous Leblouh process where girls consume tremendous amounts of food to fatten up for their wedding.

Or if you’re looking for more family controversy set in Africa, there’s Dakan, a film about a gay relationship disrupted by homophobia in Guinea.