Brief History of a Family

Lin Jianjie’s gut-punch of a debut rips the Band-Aid off the wounds of post-one-child-policy China and exposes the scars and anxieties beneath. When Wei, an outgoing only son from a middle-class milieu, and Shuo, his taciturn but scarily sharp-eyed classmate, get tangled up in each other’s lives after a mysterious incident at school, it sets off a chain reaction that turns Wei’s picture-perfect existence inside out. As Shuo worms his way deeper into Wei’s family and becomes the unofficial new member of the household, the cracks in the foundation start to show, and what was once a mutually beneficial friendship turns into a pressure cooker ready to blow. Lin’s filmmaking style forgoes hand-holding in favor of pure, raw emotion, turning a simple family drama into a seductive, unsettling psycho-thriller that holds up a mirror to the absurdities and contradictions of modern life.