In English, the word of the year (WOTY) designates the most frequented word representing an issue that resonated the most during a given year, a word that has dominated the public debate. Before Slovak media and Internet browsers publish their year-end charts of the “hottest” words and collocations, it is a rather safe bet that family will be one of them. Traditional, nuclear, multigenerational, modern, incomplete – those are but a few of the attributes the word “family” received over the past year. The country even held a referendum on preserving traditional family values. No matter how artificial the way in which the word has been put to circulation, right here and right now family is a completely legitimate subject of scientific research as well as of public discourse. Also, family is a multi-layered motive, a multi-faceted metaphor and an inexhaustible source of various story archetypes.

Each film in this section treats the family motive from a different angle and through a different genre, ranging from an intimate family drama set in cultural specifics of contemporary Iranian society, to a variation on the biblical story of the prodigal son’s return propelled by the fascinatingly obscure and manipulative main character, to the true and yet unbelievable story on a gang of brothers raised in the middle of Manhattan in total social isolation, held captive by pathologically overprotective parents. Perhaps a little far-fetched family story is told by a film whose author paints a portrait of his father as he visits his now deserted birthplace that is teeming with spectres he edged out a long time ago.