Families on Film

The Film Comment Podcast

In marketing parlance, a “family film” has tended to mean an anodyne product, something that all could enjoy and that couldn't possibly offend anyone. For our latest Film Comment Podcast, we’re taking our cue instead from movies actually about families, with all of the love, mundanity, and cringing horror left intact. That includes not only Shoplifters—a new release from that auteur of the comforts and complications of home, Hirokazu Kore-eda—but also the likes of Jodie Foster’s Home for the Holidays, Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, Yasujiro Ozu’s Equinox Flower, and a couple more that may surprise you. Film Comment’s Michael Koresky was joined for this discussion by K. Austin Collins of Vanity Fair; Aliza Ma, head programmer of Metrograph; and Farihah Zaman, filmmaker and FC contributor.