A car is ablaze. Standing on the roadside is a family, in a state of shock. A second family drives past in an expensive car without stopping. They have just collected the father’s grown-up French son from the airport. All this takes place without a word being spoken, while on the radio Slavoj Žižek is heard discussing global capital.
In perfectly framed, glossy images, we see a rich, completely disconnected, post-Yugoslavian family literally living in a glass house. They view themselves as cosmopolitan, with friends all over the world, but they fear the closeness of »normal« people who could bring chaos to their designed order.
Sonja Prosenc sees her social satire as a reinterpretation of Pasolini’s Teorema: A young stranger comes into the family, upsetting the delicate balance and revealing a world of dysfunctional relationships beneath the perfect surface.
Family Therapy explores the reasons for not stopping to help. The characters initially start out as archetypes, then Prosenc gradually unveils their emotional struggles: the daughter’s illness, the father’s escapist fantasies, the mother’s fears. Visually, the film’s style shifts from a distanced camera to a handheld one, as the reality of the outside world makes its first incursion into the sterile luxury. The sound design emphasises the dichotomy between the silence of the interior realm and the sounds of nature. Family Therapy is a visually and acoustically virtuoso black comedy that takes your breath away.

Guest: Sonja Prosenc