Love That Fractures Under Observation

MOVIE REVIEWS
A Family
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Genre: Drama
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 29m
Director(s): Mees Peijnenburg
Writer(s): Bastiaan Kroeger, Mees Peijnenburg
Cast: Finn Vogels, Celeste Holsheimer, Carice van Houten, Pieter Embrechts
Where to Watch: shown at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: What changes when the same story is told multiple times and both versions are true? A FAMILY builds the entirety of the story around that question, using structure as a moral lens. Mees Peijnenburg’s latest feature approaches divorce not as an incident, but as a lived condition, one that reshapes perception depending on where you stand, how old you are, and how much agency you’re allowed to claim.

The film follows fourteen-year-old Eli and sixteen-year-old Nina over the same three-week period, first through Nina’s eyes, then through Eli’s. Their parents’ marriage is collapsing, and the legality of custody has begun to grind forward. Both siblings are asked to articulate their wishes to a judge, a moment that crystallizes the film’s cruelty, the idea of children being forced to translate emotion into bureaucratically acceptable language.

Celeste Holsheimer’s Nina is defensive, sharp-edged, and desperate for escape. She wants out, not just of the family home, but of the emotional stasis that divorce has locked her into. Holsheimer plays Nina with a guarded ferocity that feels deserved rather than performative. Her withdrawal isn’t framed as cruelty; it’s framed as self-preservation. Nina understands that staying present means being pulled into a conflict she can’t resolve, so she chooses distance instead.

When the film resets and retells the same period of time from Eli’s perspective, everything shifts. Finn Vogels delivers a remarkable performance as a boy who still believes in restoration. Eli wants things to go back to the way they were, even as evidence mounts that this is impossible. Vogels plays him quietly, almost invisibly, a child who absorbs tension rather than reacting to it. His grief is internalized, his loyalty unwavering, and his pain largely unseen by the adults around him.

What makes A FAMILY so effective is how little it editorializes. Peijnenburg doesn’t assign blame or declare emotional winners. The film understands that both siblings are responding rationally to the same fracture, even if their responses are incompatible. The mirrored structure doesn’t exist to correct Nina’s viewpoint with Eli’s, or vice versa; it only exists to expose how limited any single perspective can be.

Carice van Houten and Pieter Embrechts, as the parents, operate more as emotional forces than narrative vision. Their performances are controlled, restrained, and deliberately opaque. The film resists the temptation to turn them into villains or martyrs. Instead, they’re portrayed as adults whose unresolved conflicts spill outward, shaping the emotional turbulence their children are forced to endure. The custody process itself becomes another antagonist with its impersonal, procedural, and indifferent nature.

Peijnenburg’s direction is precise without feeling clinical. Jasper Wolf’s cinematography emphasizes intimacy over spectacle, staying close to faces and bodies, allowing every expression to carry meaning. The repetition of scenes gains power not through variation, but through accumulation. A line of dialogue lands the second time. A moment of silence reveals new importance. The film trusts the audience to notice these shifts without underlining them.

The film’s intensity is deliberately contained, a balancing act that knows what it's doing while also taking care to share the passion in the smaller moments. A FAMILY never bursts at the seams. It doesn’t chase purification. That restraint will resonate deeply for some viewers and feel slightly withholding for others. But within the context of the film's attempt at a truthful portrayal of emotional fragmentation, that choice feels consistent rather than evasive.

The film’s biggest achievement is its refusal to simplify childhood pain. It recognizes that children don’t experience divorce as a single event, but as a series of losses: attention divided, certainty eroded, roles reshuffled without consent. The mirrored structure isn’t just narrative, it’s ethical. It insists that understanding requires more than proximity; it requires listening again.

By the time the film is wrapping up, A FAMILY hasn’t offered the solutions some are looking for, only recognition. The siblings don’t fix each other’s pain, but they begin to see it. That shift is subtle, fragile, and incomplete, and is where the film finds its quiet grace.

A FAMILY is a disciplined, emotional, intelligent work that respects its characters enough to let them remain complicated. Peijnenburg continues to prove that his greatest strength in direction lies not in provocation but in observation. This is a film that understands how families don’t just break, they reshape, leaving everyone to learn new shapes of love.

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[photo courtesy of JULIET AT PUPKIN, THE REUNION, PARADISE CITY SALES]

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