The Power of Housekeeping for Beginners’ Familial Bonds—Plus Five Other Family Films

In Housekeeping for Beginners, writer-director Goran Stolevski captures the complex, often comic work in keeping together a modern family. When Dita (Anamaria Marinca) must take on the job of raising her girlfriend’s two children—a troublemaking little girl (Dzada Selim) and a rebellious teen (Mia Mustafi)—everyone in her crowded home—from local friends to her roommate (Vladimir Tintor) and his new boyfriend (Samson Selim)—help out. “The churning tensions and layers of anxiety, the riotous humor and the hostility, the individual stories that play out simultaneously in every family: it’s all superbly captured,” writes Screen Daily.

In the film, Dita’s unruly clan is tied together by love, worry, and care. In recognition of the proud addition that Housekeeping for Beginners makes to the tradition of family films, we are remembering other extraordinary movies whose unique households also define the real meaning of family.

Housekeeping for Beginners is playing in select theaters, so get your tickets now!

The Kids Are All Right

In Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right, Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a couple with two children (Josh Hutcherson and Mia Wasikowska) who disrupt their happy home when they make contact with their sperm-donor dad (Mark Ruffalo). Inspired by her experience of having a son with her girlfriend, Cholodenko told Harper’s Bazaar, “No matter what kind of family you have…we all go through the human comedy. But if the bonds are strong enough and the desire is there, you can get to the other side, still together and still a family.” For NPR, the film is “a homage to the sheer hard work that goes into building, maintaining and defending a family.”

Watch The Kids Are All Right now on Apple TV and Amazon!

Belfast

In Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, Buddy (Jude Hill), a 9-year-old boy growing up in Belfast during the start of the Troubles, discovers a deeper meaning of home and family. As his parents (Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan) must decide whether to leave the country to avoid potential violence, Buddy’s days hanging out with his grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds) are numbered. Based on the writer-director’s own experience, Belfast chronicles how a family stayed together even as a nation fell apart. Branagh told Vanity Fair, “I was really the beneficiary of an enormous act of sacrifice on the part of my parents to leave something that defined them—that city, that extended family.” Yet even in such conflict, the film, writes Time Out, “radiates sincerity and warmth”

Watch Belfast now on Apple TV and Amazon!

Loving

Richard and Mildred Loving (Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), the couple at the center of Jeff Nichols’ Loving, exemplify the power of love to overcome intolerance. After the couple was arrested in 1958 for breaking Virginia’s law against interracial marriages, they persevered in the hope that they could return home. Negga told Entertainment Weekly, “They just wanted to be married, live their lives, have children, and be surrounded by their family in this place that they grew up.” Vox writes, “In making the political personal, the movie pulls off an even greater feat: infusing an easily politicized story with complexity and quiet passion.”

Watch Loving now on Apple TV and Amazon!

A Thousand and One

A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One tells the saga of Inez (Teyana Taylor) raising her son in New York City in the late 1990s and 2000s. Rockwell told IndieWire, “I felt like the experiences of Black women in society were overlooked—not only within society, though, but even within our own communities and families.” While the film captures the complex politics of the city, “it never loses track of the human element at its core: a tale about people struggling to make a life for themselves and their chosen family,” writes Slant.

Watch A Thousand and One on Apple TV or Amazon!

Half Brothers

Luke Greenfield’s Half Brothers follows two siblings—Renato (Luis Gerardo Méndez) and Asher (Connor Del Rio)—from opposite sides of the border who take a road trip together to uncover the secret about why their father (Juan Pablo Espinosa) had to leave his family in Mexico behind to start a new life in the United States. The heart of the story comes from the experiences of writer-producer Eduardo Cisneros, whose own father was forced to leave Mexico City when he was a child. Cisneros told Creative Screenwriting, “After moving away from my home country, I needed to put myself in my father’s shoes to realize how much we had in common.” Full Circle Cinema writes, “Full of an abundance of heart, Half Brothers encourages us to rediscover that which means the most to us in life before it’s too late.”

Watch Half Brothers on Apple TV or Amazon now!