Strug­gling fathers take the spot­light at this year’s BFI Lon­don Film Festival

Par­ents can be the cause of our worst mem­o­ries or the pur­vey­ors of our iden­ti­ties – in some cas­es, they are one and the same. This is pret­ty much the con­sen­sus for on-screen par­ents too — often they are bare­ly char­ac­ters in their own right, only serv­ing as either a hin­drance or a help­ing hand in the pro­tag­o­nists’ jour­ney. It is easy to for­get that the peo­ple who raise us aren’t there to just con­tribute to our char­ac­ter devel­op­ment or fur­ther our own sto­ry arcs.

After the height of the pan­dem­ic forced many par­ents and chil­dren into clos­er prox­im­i­ty than ever before, a new­found empha­sis has been put on the mat­ter of these rela­tion­ships, and what they might look like in the mod­ern world. Inverse to that, how par­ents nego­ti­ate the rela­tion­ship with their chil­dren, and how it affects their iden­ti­ties. They are peo­ple first — ones who have their own desires and fail­ures that we often fail to put into per­spec­tive, pre­oc­cu­pied with our own narrative.

This year’s Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val screened sev­er­al films that focused on the rela­tion­ship between par­ents and chil­dren – specif­i­cal­ly, por­tray­ing par­ents as peo­ple and demys­ti­fy­ing the role of a par­ent, putting them at the front of their own nar­ra­tives and expos­ing lay­ers to them that they were not allowed before on film. Three films in par­tic­u­lar come to mind that high­light this mat­ter in stark­ly dif­fer­ent but effec­tive ways: Char­lotte Wells’s After­sun, Dar­ren Aronofsky’s The Whale, and James Morosini’s I Love My Dad.

After­sun fol­lows Sophie (played at 11-years-old by Frankie Corio) as she rem­i­nisces about a hol­i­day to Turkey she took as a child with her young father Calum (Paul Mescal). A trip where they are mis­tak­en as sib­lings and rife with as much con­flict as there is gen­uine love, it is a per­son­al explo­ration for Sophie as she tries to rec­on­cile and under­stand the man her father was. The film is dri­ven by the won­der­ful per­for­mances giv­en by the two leads, but Mescal’s qui­et pain as a strug­gling father who only wants the best for his grow­ing daugh­ter tru­ly push­es it an extra mile, mak­ing for a tru­ly engross­ing watch.

He jug­gles his ​“dad” per­sona poor­ly in front of his daugh­ter, and it is easy to catch the cracks of Calum’s strug­gles the longer the vaca­tion goes on. On top of that, the use of a dig­i­tal cam­corder to frame the trip is a throw­back that pos­si­bly hits far too close to home for peo­ple who grew up in the ear­ly 2000s, which makes the view­ing expe­ri­ence espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant to those who are cur­rent­ly try­ing to have fam­i­lies of their own, and pos­si­bly painful as they reflect on their own parents.

The Whale takes a much more direct approach, focus­ing specif­i­cal­ly on Char­lie (Bren­dan Fras­er) as he strug­gles with his mor­bid obe­si­ty while try­ing to recon­nect with his teenage daugh­ter Ellie (Sadie Sink). Dev­as­tat­ing to almost an exces­sive amount, the film takes a painful look into what caused Charlie’s demise in health and his estrange­ment from his daughter.

Fras­er takes the lead in this film after an unfair­ly long hia­tus from the indus­try and proves his act­ing chops — Char­lie may have failed in his tra­di­tion­al father role, but his per­son­hood does not stop there as he tries to chase hap­pi­ness out­side of soci­etal expec­ta­tions. It tru­ly brings up the ques­tion of how much must a per­son sac­ri­fice for the hap­pi­ness of their chil­dren, and if it is worth the even­tu­al gain in the future. Wrapped around by allu­sions to reli­gion and the clas­sic lit­er­a­ture book Moby Dick, it is a pow­er­ful watch that speaks to the emo­tion­al harm par­ents can both expe­ri­ence and inflict.

By far the light­est entry of the three films, I Love My Dad is a cringe com­e­dy done right. Chuck (Pat­ton Oswalt) cat­fish­es his son Franklin (Morosi­ni), pos­ing as a wait­ress named Bec­ca after he is blocked on all social media and effec­tive­ly ignored on call as well. Hav­ing had a bumpy rela­tion­ship since his son was younger, Chuck’s mis­guid­ed act to recon­nect with him is painful to watch but there is still a sad under­stand­ing in his actions. His des­per­a­tion is fueled not only by the want to keep his father-son rela­tion­ship, but also by the fact that he is fun­da­men­tal­ly not a good per­son. It is an awful truth that dri­ves the plot for­ward, even as peo­ple around him want him to stop this rather dia­bol­i­cal plan. His per­son­hood is what makes him a bad par­ent, which then caus­es for some fun­ny con­clu­sions and a nat­ur­al sep­a­ra­tion from his role as a sup­posed father.

The movies high­light­ed are not the lim­it to this bur­geon­ing genre of films, and there are oth­er explo­rations of par­ent­hood to be found out­side the role of a cis­gen­der white father. Niky­atu Jusu’s Nan­ny is a deeply per­son­al but broad­ly under­stood film that por­trays its main char­ac­ter as a woman as much as she is a moth­er. Sebastián Lelio’s The Won­der, Joan­na Hogg’s The Eter­nal Daugh­ter and Flo­ri­an Zeller’s The Son echo this pat­tern, while out­side the LFF pro­gramme, break­out hit Every­thing Every­where All At Once by The Daniels focus­es on moth­er-of-one Eve­lyn Quan (Michelle Yeoh) and her ques­tions regard­ing her life path.

With the num­ber of films on this top­ic that have popped up dur­ing the fes­ti­val and out­side of it, the influx in sep­a­rat­ing par­ents from their par­ent­hood might sig­nal a recent recon­sid­er­a­tion of the peo­ple that raise us. A person’s indi­vid­u­al­ism does not dis­ap­pear the moment they become a par­ent, and that is more than okay – see­ing more films explore the inte­ri­or­i­ty of the peo­ple who shape our under­stand­ing of the world is as great as it is poignant.