{"id":263760,"date":"2026-01-29T13:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/263760\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T13:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:48:09","slug":"between-brothers-doc-film-on-family-trauma-interview-iffr-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/263760\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Between Brothers’ Doc Film on Family Trauma Interview: IFFR 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTo say that Dutch documentary filmmaker Tom Fassaert<\/a> likes to keep things in the family is only partly true. Yes, he has made a name for himself with his intimate, heartfelt cinematic exploration of family issues and identity. But he doesn\u2019t keep his findings within the family. Instead, he invites viewers to join him on his deep dives into hidden histories and issues \u2013\u00a0even if it may be emotional, and at times difficult, for him, his loved ones, and viewers. <\/p>\n

\n\tHis 2015 doc A Family Affair<\/a>\u00a0(2015), which opened IDFA in Amsterdam and was nominated for a European Film Award, followed him accepting a surprise invitation from his 95-year-old grandmother to visit her in South Africa.\u00a0The film saw him confront secrets, confessions, and illusions of a big, happy family.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Between Brothers (Tussen broers), the writer-director\u2019s new family detective story, Fassaert zooms in on the relationship between his father Rob, 72, and his dad\u2019s older brother Ren\u00e9, 75. The film, diving into questions of family, memory, and identity, world premieres in the Limelight program<\/a> of the 55th edition<\/a> of the\u00a0International Film Festival Rotterdam<\/a>\u00a0(IFFR<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\n\tInitially, the story he tells is a tragicomedy about the unusual dynamic between his father, who used to be a psychologist, and his brother, a psychiatric patient who is a hoarder and lives as a recluse. We watch Rob visiting his brother regularly and trying to help him declutter. But the film eventually morphs into a road trip of a family searching for the brothers\u2019 unknown roots, namely their father, who left them in a children\u2019s home when they were toddlers and disappeared from their lives for good.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfter the death of their mother, two elderly brothers make a final attempt to clear up the wreckage of their past,\u201d reads a logline for the film. \u201cIn scenes as intimate as they are tragicomic, filmmaker Tom Fassaert, the son of one of them, is drawn ever deeper into the mystery of their long-lost father.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEarly on in Between Brothers, Fassaert wonders whether the cycle of intergenerational trauma can be broken. On the search for a possible answer, he takes audiences on a winding path full of love, drama, old and new questions, conflict, laughter, and all sorts of other emotions that families bring with them. And he wraps up the film by returning to the question of intergenerational trauma with a reveal underlying why is exploration is so important to him.<\/p>\n

\n\tFassaert talked to THR about the long journey that his family went on for Between Brothers, universal themes in their story, and what\u2019s next for him.<\/p>\n

\n\tBetween Brothers is a genre-bending mix of odd-couple road trip, historical mystery, and family therapy, among other things. \u201cYes, it\u2019s many things at the same time, which is also why it\u2019s taken so long to make,\u201d the filmmaker says, sharing that he started shooting the first material in 2016. \u201cBetween starting the shoots and finishing the edit, I became a father of two children.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Fassaert, courtesy of Mick van Dantzig<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Mick van Dantzig<\/p>\n

\n\tDon\u2019t expect Between Brothers to be a talking heads and stats type of doc. \u201cThe film is investigating certain things that seem factual, yet to me, they are more emotional and psychological,\u201d highlights Fassaert. \u201cIn many ways, in a family, things happen, traumas happen, big wars or small wars happen \u2013 parents divorcing, families falling apart. All these things happen to almost everyone of us, yet the way we deal with traumatic events differs. The way we deal with them makes one family functional and the other family dysfunctional.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFacing such family traumas has become core to Fassaerts\u2019s cinematic journey. \u201cPart of what I\u2019m attempting to do with my films is not just investigating what actually happened,\u201d he tells THR. \u201cI\u2019m really much more focused on how those traumatic moments resonate throughout the lives of the people concerned, but also intergenerationally. It\u2019s about how they cycle through generations and still affect generations that never experienced the actual happenings. I\u2019m fascinated by these psychological mechanisms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDocumenting interactions between people who are members of your family can\u2019t always be easy. Is that part of the reason why Fassaert regularly makes his presence known in Between Brothers? \u201cI\u2019m passionate about observational documentary filmmaking, but I\u2019m not naive,\u201d he tells THR. \u201cI know that the fly on the wall concept is very limited. It\u2019s an illusion to think that my presence would not affect reality. So, I constantly try to break that idea in the film in a subtle way. I don\u2019t want to make it too much of a meta film, but I feel it\u2019s important for viewers to feel my presence, because this presence behind the camera is actually affecting what\u2019s happening in front of the camera. Also, the film is extremely subjective. It\u2019s told from the filmmaker\u2019s point of view, with the filmmaker being a fellow family member of these two brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe writer of these lines wonders if going after, unearthing, and capturing family secrets and issues on film isn\u2019t emotionally draining. \u201cAfter A Family Affair, I felt I was done with the subject. I was just emotionally and physically burned out,\u201d Fassaerts shares. \u201cAnd I was ready to fully devote myself to my own life and stop looking at the past.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Between Brothers\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat got in the way of that plan was \u2013 yes, you guessed it! \u2013 family. After all, soon after his previous film was completed and released, his father told him that it was time for an intervention to start cleaning up his uncle\u2019s place. \u201cI felt I had to go and see that, but I didn\u2019t take the camera at first,\u201d the filmmaker recalls. \u201cI wasn\u2019t planning to make a film yet. But that changed when I started observing them and seeing how, in a way, my father is so focused on creating order and has this urge to try to change his brother. They are kind of each other\u2019s opposite. They love each other, and they suffocate each other. That ambiguity made me really want to make this film. It made me really passionate about continuing this difficult path I\u2019m taking with these personal films.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEditing Between Brothers was a key challenge to ensure a mix of sequences focused on information with family interactions and emotional scenes. While Fassaerts says he \u201cshot a lot less than I shot for A Family Fair,\u201d he acknowledges that \u201cthere were loads of darlings I had to kill\u201d in terms of footage he really liked. \u201cThere are scenes where, up until now, I\u2019m thinking: \u2018Why couldn\u2019t I find a place for them in the film?\u2019 Because they\u2019re so funny or emotional or ambiguous. But you have to make these really tough choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSomething new in Between Brothers that the filmmaker hadn\u2019t used before is archive footage, including found footage. \u201cThis material is from amateur black-and-white films from the same era as the history we focus on,\u201d Fassaert explains. \u201cI was taking a risk with that. I\u2019m not explicitly telling you that some of the images you see are not real images [in the sense that they are not of my family]. I thought about the ethical challenge of that, but it [worked as an added illustration] for this really subjective film. I wanted to take that risk because I don\u2019t want to repeat myself. I think that\u2019s the death of every creative person \u2013 if you start repeating yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Between Brothers\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s next for Fassaert? The Dutch filmmaker is actually working on another moving doc focused on family and trauma. \u201cThe film is called In Your Shadow,\u201d he tells THR. \u201cIf you think A Family Affair and Between Brothers were emotional and personal, this next film is going even deeper and will be an emotional rollercoaster. It focuses on my father-in-law, who was a guerrilla fighter against Apartheid.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAdds the filmmaker: \u201cHe was born and raised in Soweto in Johannesburg, and then was part of the \u2018Generation of \u201976,\u2019 the uprising of students. The protest was never meant to be violent, yet it became a very violent protest. He became involved in such a way that he couldn\u2019t turn back anymore, and he had to skip the country. And then he joined the African National Congress ANC\u2019s armed wing, the MK.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 14 years in exile, he rose through the ranks. \u201cInternally, at a certain moment, there was such a Stalinist kind of paranoia that everyone was suspecting everyone of being a traitor or spy or so,\u201d Fassaert explains. \u201cThere were mutinies, there were killings, and there were prison camps worse than you can imagine. He became traumatized. And in \u201989 when he skipped Angola, not to move back to South Africa, but to move to the Netherlands with his family and my wife, who was born in Angola. He decided that the past was the past and that he was never going to talk about what happened.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tConcludes Fassaert: \u201cSo, this film is actually an ultimate attempt to slowly but steadily open him up and try to deal with this trauma that\u2019s not only his trauma, but that is also casting a shadow on the whole family. So it is a really intense process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To say that Dutch documentary filmmaker Tom Fassaert likes to keep things in the family is only partly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,138333,138334,85,399,138335,46,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-263760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-iffr","10":"tag-iffr-2026","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-international","13":"tag-international-film-festival-rotterdam","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}