[Review] Tribeca Film Festival: Family Dinner
Content Warning: This film explores the pressure to lose weight through the perspective of a 15-year-old girl. Throughout the film, there are incidences of fatphobia, weight control, and other incidents that may be triggering for those with past trauma associated with weight and eating disorders. Please take care when watching this film.
“Overweight” 15-year-old Simi (Nina Katlein) is dropped off at her Aunt Claudia’s (Pia Hierzegger) house in the bleak Austrian countryside for the Easter weekend. The plan is to spend time with her aunt, a renowned nutritionist and health cookbook author, with the hope that Simi will learn how to change her diet and lose weight. Whilst there Simi meets her hostile and strange cousin Fillip (Alexander Sladek) and her eccentric aunt’s new husband, Stefan (Michael Pink). While everything seems to go as a typical visit with family would, Simi suspects her aunt of some very sinister dealings after a series of cruel encounters, including being told to fast until Easter Sunday. As the movie unravels, we are exposed to the horrifying nature of Claudia and her strict regime in her family home, feelings that are certainly foreign to Simi. Often spending time on her phone speaking to her mother, Simi begins to notice the strange behaviour of her aunt and uncle and how it all wasn’t exactly what she had signed up for.
Set in a family farmhouse in the countryside of Austria, Simi is exposed to her aunt’s very in-your-face way of attending to Fillip, crossing many boundaries in order to make sure he is taken care of. At first, Simi thinks that this behaviour is usual. However, as the film unfolds, Simi suspects that there are ulterior motives for her aunt’s tenderness, love, and care. Claudia is immediately an overarching presence in the home, enforcing strict dietary restrictions on Simi. As the film progresses, we discover Claudia has a contemptuous mean streak that affects Fillip more often than anyone else. Fillip eventually confides in Simi that he has concerns for his safety, causing Simi to investigate her suspicions.
The film is littered with small nods to sinister folk horror elements including sigils, rituals, and images that are discovered and displayed throughout⸺all signs pointing to Aunt Claudia being involved in something suspicious and terrifying for a 15-year-old to fathom. These elements make the slow burn of the film worth it as we are given small pieces of key evidence that lead to the horrifying nexus of the family meals and their Easter weekend plans. The film is compelling in the way that it slowly delivers the sinister motives of Claudia and Stefan and their planned Easter weekend bonfire. Pia Hierzegger is gripping in the way in which she chillingly alternates between warm and caring and cold and utterly terrifying. Without not wanting to give too much away, the Family Dinner does a fantastic job at throwing a curve ball of a plot line that is gross and completely caught me off guard.
Family Dinner is a slow burn of a psychological horror movie, with the creepiness and sinister atmosphere etching itself into every element of Simi’s interactions with her odd family. Family Dinner is a bleak and engrossing film about family dynamics in the face of being unified and feeling complete. Claudia repeated multiple times that the Easter family dinner is a chance for them to “be a family again”. The details of the meal are not unpredictable but do not detract from the impact and disturbing outcome of the dinner. Director and Writer Peter Hengl delivers a chilling story with folk horror elements that feel unique to this family’s nightmare of an Easter story.
Family Dinner is the new feature film by Director and Writer Peter Hengl, the film premiered globally at Tribeca Film Festival on June 10th with cast and filmmakers present! To watch the film over the weekend, you can attend any of the following screenings:
Saturday, 6/11 @ 9:45pm - Village East Cinema
Wednesday, 6/15 @ 8:15pm - Tribeca Film Center
Visit the Tribeca Family Dinner page to find out more
