If you are intrigued by the idea of a social drama that doesn’t follow all the tropes that you can expect based on tradition and past cinematic experiences, A Happy Family is for you. After all, the feature debut of Swiss director and writer Jan-Eric Mack features an ambivalent main character, namely a single mother who doesn’t fit neatly into categories of black or white and good or evil.
Complexity instead of moralizing is the motto. Plus, the film takes pleasure in mixing genres, surprising with thriller vibes that many won’t see coming.
A Happy Family, world premiering on Saturday, July 4 at the60th editionof theKarlovy VaryInternationalFilm Festival(KVIFF), also breaks new ground in another way. It is the first-ever Swiss film in the Czech fest’s Crystal Globe Competition.
The movie about Niki, a mother with two children and two jobs, but no money, explores such themes as poverty and social inequality. After a fire burns down the family’s home and turns their lives upside down, her children are placed in foster care. Banned from contact with them, Niki assumes a new identity to stay close to them.
Mack co-wrote A Happy Family with Anna Schinz, Nikita Afanasjew and Eva Kienholz. Schinz also stars as Niki, with the cast also featuring Julia Jentsch, Bettina Stucky, Michael Neuenschwander, Alireza Bayram and Martina Apostolova.
The film’s cinematographer is Yunus Roy Imer, its editor is Benjamin Fueter. Produced by Martin Joss and Peter Reichenbach, A Happy Familyis a C-Films AG production, in collaboration with DCM and in co-production with SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen and SRG SSR, with the support of Zürcher Filmstiftung, Bundesamt für Kultur, Valais Film Commission, Film Commission Zurich, Focal Stage Pool and Suissimage. DCM Film Distribution has the Swiss rights, with Bendita Film Sales handling international sales rights.
Mack previously created short films, such as Facing Mecca, about a man who faces a labyrinth of Swiss bureaucracy when he prepares the burial of his Muslim wife, and co-directed the historical spy seriesDavos 1917.
Ahead of the film’s world premiere at Karlovy Vary, Mack talked to THR about the inspiration for A Happy Family, wanting to surprise audiences and create debate, and why complexity and hope are such key ingredients.
What inspired A Happy Family? And can you explain why you wanted to show a side of Switzerland that the world doesn’t usually get to see?
The COVID crisis suddenly brought poverty in Switzerland into sharp focus as long lines formed at food banks. People from the middle class and beyond were affected. This was the initial spark for Anna’s research. Later, we discovered that a large proportion of those affected could be described as the “working poor,” meaning people who live below the poverty line despite having jobs. Many of them are single mothers due to structural disadvantages. We wanted to investigate why this was the case.
It was a topic nobody was talking about, but it is very important for us to shine a light on what people should know and show another side of Switzerland.
What can you share about the research Anna and you conducted?
We are a family. We do have two kids, and so, of course, we always have family politics around us, and that’s how we came across these care and related topics. In Switzerland, having kids is something very private, and public support is quite limited. Switzerland is one of the last countries in Europe when it comes to the support of families.
Over the course of two years, we conducted extensive research and spoke with single mothers living in poverty, as well as with representatives of non-governmental organizations and government agencies. In the process, we found that most of the problems are systemic in nature.
Given your TV series experience, did you and Anna ever consider making this a series as you were developing A Happy Family?
No, we had the feeling from the beginning that we wanted to make a film. We loved the idea of having this opportunity to talk about the film with the audience, to share views on this topic and meet people to start a conversation. A feature film seemed to me to be the right format for telling this story, and it gave me the artistic freedom to develop my own style.
A Happy Family mixes social drama with genre, especially thriller, elements. What was the thinking behind that?
With this topic, you would expect a social drama, but we really loved the idea of a genre mix. So, next to the social drama, you have the thriller elements and, importantly, also a kind of humor to get through to the audience.
We tell the story from the strong perspective of this mother, Niki, and from her point of view, there is a lot of antagonism. As her desperation grows, Niki takes greater risks, thereby increasingly putting her own children in a conflict of loyalty. Both of these factors lead to tense – but also quite funny –moments.
Watching the film, I kept feeling you were drawing me in and made me feel one way, only for me to then change my mind and my feelings. It was uncomfortable not to “know” how to feel about everyone and everything, but also felt really engaging and maybe closer to real life…
We were interested in having an ambivalent main character who keeps you asking yourself what you would do, as you said. The viewer should continually question their own moral standpoint because we wanted to cover the full complexity of this topic. The officials have to make very difficult decisions, and we tried to understand both sides in order to discuss a structural problem.
Maybe that is why A Happy Family was an experience for me that felt very different from politics in many parts of the world where social issues lead people to assign blame to one person or entity. It often seems like we like to say it’s either all the fault of the mother, or it’s all the government’s fault! Did you try to show that both could be partially true at the same time?
Blaming someone is not usually part of a solution. Of course, typically, both sides have to move. But in the end, in our research, we clearly found that single mothers are very often victims of this system, and this has to do with its cultural and structural backgrounds, with politics, and so on. Switzerland needs to change a lot, in our opinion. This is a responsibility of the whole society. Things are changing, but slowly – too slowly.
So, what’s your hope for the film?
It is a huge goal to expect a film to change politics, but to help people gain an understanding and to be emotionally touched is my first goal. I want them to be able to connect with this mother and the other persons involved in this story, so that in the process, they open up their hearts and minds to these topics.
How did the co-writing with Anna and the two other writers actually work?
Anna was actually the head writer. She started this project and, since we are a couple, the film was living with us for about five years. During the process, we added two co-writers to the project. The four of us wrote it, which is very unusual, but we are very close. Later, Anna needed to change perspective from an analytical view as a writer to an emotional approach as an actress to become the main character.
Tell me a bit about the casting of the kids and the care that went into protecting them given some of the heavier themes of A Happy Family!
We had a big casting, and about 500 kids applied. We started with an online casting first, then we had 80 live castings, and then a second round. So it was a super-long process to find those two kids. We knew they would be acting for about 18 days of shooting, which is quite a lot. And I couldn’t be happier to have found them both.
The girl turned 10, while the boy was about six when we shot the movie. That is a big difference at this age. We did a lot of rehearsals and workshops before the shoot. It was important for them to understand the situation and to deal with their emotions. It was a step-by-step and very slow process to bring them into their characters. Trust and fun were the key, and as a director, I don’t like to manipulate anyway, and I don’t do it with kids either. So we had open discussions.
How did you end up with the title, A Happy Family?
We actually found it very early in the process of writing. The term works in many languages and describes an ideal that we question. We like the dialectic. And the title has this ambivalent feeling, which the movie has too, so we felt it worked.
How was it to create your first feature and then get to premiere it at Karlovy Vary, as the first-ever Swiss main competition film, nonetheless?
It’s a huge, huge honor and a great pleasure, premiering at Karlovy Vary, especially in the main competition. So, we’ve been speechless and are really looking forward to it.
It was also special, because, by coincidence, Anna is half Czech, and she speaks the language. That makes it even more special to us. It feels like things are coming full circle somehow.