Tagline: Every family has its ghosts.
Synopsis: October Country is a beautifully rendered portrait of an American family struggling for stability while haunted by the ghosts of war, teen pregnancy, foster care and child abuse. A collaboration between filmmaker Michael Palmieri and photographer and family member Donal Mosher, this vibrant and penetrating documentary examines the forces that unsettle the working poor and the violence that lurks beneath the surface of American life. Every family has its ghosts. The Mosher family has more than most. Shot over a year from one Halloween to the next, the film creates a stunning cinematic portrait of a family who are unique but also sadly representative of the struggles of America's working class. The film was created to be both a universal story of family struggle and a socially conscious portrait of compelling, articulate individuals grappling with the forces that tear at their homes and relationships. Combining the access only available to a family member with an intimate visual style of a filmmaker encountering the family's dynamics for the first time, the film gives a deeply personal voice to the national issues of economic instability, domestic abuse, war trauma, and sexual molestation. As the Moshers do their best to confront their ghosts, we confront the broader issues that haunt us all in the continued struggle for the American Dream.
The year may have its first specialty hit in Karan Johar's "My Name Is Khan," which Fox Searchlight released in North America this weekend just as it was making its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival overseas. The film - about a Muslim who suffers from Asperger's sundrome who is det...
Read More »The type of introspective, intimate domestic American nonfiction that has sprouted up so much in art-house theaters in the wake of the success of "Capturing the Friedmans" has come to typify documentary filmmaking of the past decade. Itself somewhat of an acolyte of the far more sensitive "Crumb," w...
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