Mazes and Escapes. Family Portraits in Cinema
Luise Merkert and Anna Hepting (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Media representations play a crucial role in shaping our ideas of family. They convey ideals as well as norms and values related to family, while also questioning and critiquing them. This lecture examines contemporary cinematic images of family in international arthouse cinema and explores the ways in which family is portrayed and negotiated. Particular attention is given to religious references that become significant in the staging of family. Films draw on religious traditions and worldviews to depict family life: weddings and baptisms are celebrated, and loved family members are mourned at funerals. The cinematic family also becomes a site for the transmission of religious knowledge, as well as a stage for religious conflict. The selected films provide insight into these diverse interconnections between film, family, and religion.
Films:
BROKER (Hirokazu Kore-eda, JP 2022)
C’È ANCORA DOMANI (There’s Still Tomorrow, Paola Cortellesi, IT 2023)
JENSEITS VON SCHULD (Beyond Guilt, Katharina Köstner / Katrin Nemec, DE 2024)
MA VIE DE COURGETTE (My Life as a Zucchini, Claude Barras, CH/FR 2016)
The lecture will be held in German.
Participation is possible without pre-registration and is open to all interested parties.
Organiser:
Prof Dr Daniel Tyradellis (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Dr Alia Rayyan (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Dr Laura Goldenbaum (Humboldt Forum Foundation in the Berlin Palace)
Place and time:
6. May 2026,
6 to 8 pm
in Room 3 (Saal 3), ground floor,
Humboldt Forum, Schlossplatz.
Anna Hepting and Luise Merkert are doctoral candidates and research associates at the Chair of Religious Studies and the History of Religion at the Faculty of Protestant Theology, LMU Munich. Together with Prof. Dr. Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati, they are part of the research consortium ForFamily, where they work on the subproject “The Family in Film: Media as a Site for Negotiating Familial Narratives, Values, and Transformations.” Their dissertations focus on the negotiation of family in Disney animated films and in contemporary horror cinema.
