Berlin Film Festival – Winner of Grand Prix for Best Film, Generation 14plus Zurich Film Festival – Winner of the Golden Eye, Focus Competition & Zurich Churches Film Prize
Written and directed by Fred Baillif, LA MIF (The Fam) is an intimate, naturalistic drama that offers a glimpse of life within a residential care home for at-risk teenage girls. The powerful and moving film received its world premiere at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix for Best Film in the Generation 14plus competition. At the recent Zurich Film Festival it won the Golden Eye in the Focus Competition and the Ecumenical Film Prize of the Zurich Churches.
LA MIF (Mif is the French slang word for family) is set in a residential care home in Geneva, where a group of teenage girls from difficult backgrounds live as a community with social workers. Sharing joy and pain, the forced “family” experience creates unexpected tensions and intimacies. When an incident arises, the fall-out reveals the weaknesses of the outdated contemporary social care system.
The film was developed over a period of two years by Fred Baillif, a former social worker, with the collaboration of non-professional actors made up of residents and staff of a children’s home. The ensemble cast includes Claudia Grob, Anaïs Uldry, Kassia Da Costa, Joyce Esther Ndayisenga, Charlie Areddy, Amélie Tonsi, Amandine Golay and Sara Tulu, who deliver moving and dynamic performances. Exploring its characters’ stories individually and collectively, LA MIF is an empathetic and emotional examination of the juvenile care system, ploughing the line between documentary and fiction.
LA MIF is screening in the 65th BFI London Film Festival on:
Saturday 9 October 11:45am (Digital P&I Screening)
Sunday 10 October (UK Premiere) at BFI Southbank (NFT3, 20:50) & online on BFI Player (21:00)
Monday 11 October at BFI Southbank (NFT1, 12:00)
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/article/mif