Sister of Mine

If as a filmmaker you focus on your own dysfunctional family, inevitably you’re also part of the picture. Mariusz Rusiński initially seems like a fly on the wall of his comfortable parental home. He observes the arguments between his sister Zuzia and their mother, who never could imagine that parenthood would involve testing her underage daughter’s urine for traces of drugs. He records the altercations between his parents, in which despair is wrapped up in blame.

The underlying question is how it is possible that a gifted, intelligent 17-year-old could have gone off the rails so badly? And how can you get addiction under control and function as a family?

To investigate, Rusiński becomes an increasingly visible part of a complex reality that sometimes resembles a nightmare. Strikingly, although Zuzia is unable to control her substance abuse, she can still fire off analyses of their collective mess like machine gun salvos at her parents and brother with painful precision.