Liens de sang

Fabienne Abramovich

The film invites us to follow the lives of four Geneva families living in a building called “Les Schtroumpfs” (The Smurfs), with unusual architecture. Over a period of three years, the director sensitively filmed the moments which, behind the uncertainties of the transmission, reveal the rich and complex relationships of different members of a family. So the family appears with all its strength: a laboratory where otherness develops thanks to the conflicts and to the slow workings of love. Without interviews or commentary, the viewer discovers the protagonists through scenes taken from real life as if following a work of fiction. Personalities and family destinies are unveiled alternately, via successive touches until they form a fabric that links the major stages of life from birth to death.

Following DIE SAIT QUOI, in she asked which retired people in a Parisian park about the meaning of life, Fabienne Abramovich delivers a grand cycle about the relationships between parents and children in LIENS DE SANG. Based on the principle of unity of place (the “Cité des Schtroumpfs” in Geneva), she accompanies four middle-class families through significant phases over a three-year period: birth, death, school successes, wedding anniversaries and unavoidable departures. The homes all seem to make up a single great tribe, that of the contemporary family. For the Armbruster-Elatifis, homework is the big issue, all the more so because two cultures cohabit in the family, given that the father is Muslim and the mother Catholic. A birth scatters the Pasquier family; the father’s absence brings a shadow to the picture. In the Lhôtes’ kitchen, the conflict between the mother and the son reaches a climax. Finally, the Oppligers surround their dying grandmother with love.
LIENS DE SANG is a unique exploration, never a sociological approach.Without asking a single question, Fabienne Abramovich empathises deeply with her characters and is allowed into such intimacy that she seems to have been adopted by the families. She weaves a profoundly organic, humanist story describing the modern family from its trials to its joys and from tradition to modernity.
Visions du Réel Nyon 2008

Fabienne Abramovich

Born in 1959 in Paris, France. Swiss citizenship. Gymnast and judoka, then focus on contemporary dance. Dance education at various institutes in Europe and the USA. Since 1980 lives in Geneva. Choreography of around 15 dance productions. 1991 collaborates closely with Harold Vasselin on a dance film.

2008 LIENS DE SANG
2004 DIEU SAIT QUOI

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