Sweet Thing

Alexandre Rockwell's 2020 film follows two siblings growing up with an alcoholic father. Sober, he is playful and affectionate; drinking, he takes the house apart. Their mother is mostly absent. At a certain point the children leave and set out on their own. The film was shot on sixteen-millimetre black-and-white stock, which gives the image a distinct texture; colour enters briefly in some scenes, and those are the children's moments of imagination. That distinction is its most striking formal decision. The two children in the leads are Rockwell's own, which explains the ease in the scenes. The film neither sentimentalises childhood nor reduces it to a narrative of victimhood. It won a prize in the Generation section at the Berlin Film Festival. Who it's for: those who like small-scale American independent cinema and films told from a child's point of view. Who it's not for: viewers who do not want to approach parental alcoholism and neglect; the film shows both directly.