Tussen broers (Between Brothers)

In this intimate family portrait, documentary filmmaker Tom Fassaert observes the relationship between his father Rob (72) and his older brother René (75). What begins as a tragicomic film about their unusual dynamic – one was a psychologist for many years, the other a psychiatric patient – turns into a moving search for their unknown roots.

Since the death of their mother, retired psychologist Rob has been visiting his older brother, René, more regularly. René has been living in isolation for years in a house filled with belongings and old memories, the result of his compulsive hoarding. As they attempt to tidy up the living space and make it more liveable, the brothers grow closer. However, they are also confronted with old patterns and their shared traumatic family history. Rob and René decide to find out together who their father was – the man who left them in a children’s home when they were toddlers and then disappeared from their lives for good.

In his moving and tragicomic family documentary Between Brothers, Dutch filmmaker Tom Fassaert – Rob’s son and René’s nephew – observes the special dynamic between the two brothers. In a kind of spiritual successor to his award-winning documentary A Family Affair (2015), in which he also explored his family history, Fassaert attempts to answer the question of whether the cycle of intergenerational trauma can be broken. The result is a cleverly edited, funny, yet heartfelt family film.

– Cas Hoekstra