Factory 25 has acquired writer/director Lucy Kerr’s award-winning feature directorial debut Family Portrait which world premiered at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival in the Concorso Cineasti del presente section, and won the Boccalino d’Oro for Best Director for Kerr.
Starring in the film are Deragh Campbell (Kazik Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 ft., Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven), Chris Galust (Give Me Liberty), Katie Folger (Day 5), Rachel Alig (First Blush), Robert Salas (Cassandro), and Silvana Jakich (What Happened at 625 River Road?).
Factory 25 revealed the film’s official theatrical trailer and announced that it will begin its theatrical run at Metrograph theater in New York City on June 28, with further engagements and a digital release to follow.
Set at the dawn of Covid, Family Portrait follows a sprawling family gathering to take a group picture as Katy (Campbell) searches for the matriarch that can’t be found, desperately weaving from one family member to the next. Beginning on an idealistic summer day, the film progressively descends into a realm where time and space lose their grip, transforming the family portrait into a solemn and enigmatic ritual of transition.
The feature teases the line between non-fiction and narrative filmmaking, using intimate Steadicam cinematography, intentionally daunting sound design, and an all-enveloping mounting frenetic energy to create a wholly unique and emotionally powerful cinematic tableau.
In addition to the film’s winning reception at Locarno, Family Portrait has received accolades from the Black Canvas Film Festival (Best Director), the Hainan Island International Film Festival (Best Picture, Best Actress, and the Best Artistic Contribution), the Austin Film Society (Feature Film Grant), FIDLab (AirFrance Prize), and the New Horizon Award from the U.S. In Progress event in Wroclaw, Poland.
Kerr, Houston-born and New York-based, was one of Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Film of 2022 and a graduate of CalArts film and video program. Inspired by familial pain and the feeling of loss that reflects what was felt by many during the pandemic, in the world of her film —which was shot in Hunt, TX, along the Guadalupe River— when grief is denied, mourning transforms into a melancholia that begins to undermine the sense of “reality,” ultimately leading to a divergence beyond the territory of the living.