Looking at the awards section for this movie on IMDb, it has a lot of them, but they seem to be like best first timer, best female director, best Canadian movie, and such, which really undersells this movie. I had to travel to see it, but I’m glad I did.

This is only like 90 minutes, which is good. Too many movies are extended beyond what they need to be these days. About the first two thirds are fictionalized autobiographical memories from the writer-director’s childhood. The last third I’ll save for spoilers.

Immigrants from Hungary have just moved to a new house in Canada. The father works from home while the mother tries to keep their four kids occupied. This isn’t easy, because the oldest son keeps acting in anti-social ways. Now, I don’t know if this counts strictly as anti-social behavior, but he does make the lives of the family very hard.

We mostly follow the situation from a younger daughter’s point of view. She is too young to really understand what’s going on, but then again, she isn’t the only one having problems grasping it. Professional help is pretty useless.

If I have a problem with the movie, it’s that the point of view changes to the parents quite often, so we hear discussions where the kid couldn’t possibly have been aware of. This kind of muddies the water, but I think the director didn’t want to throw her parents under the bus and wanted them to seem like they did what they could in a possible situation. This is something the mother actually worries about later in the film.

The movie moves in a languid pace. It’s a series of summer days, so this is the way it should be. Also, since we just follow the family doing whatever they are doing, the situations where the oldest son does something that becomes a problem, you don’t expect it, because the movie has lulled you into peace. Then shit hits the fan again. Since we mostly see what the little kid sees, the brother doesn’t even get really violent or threatening in her presence. He is just cold and distant. Yet, at the beginning of the movie, she tells us that she just remembers hating him as a kid.

This is a courageous movie. Sure, we’ve had movies like We Need to Talk About Kevin, but this movie just has an extra level of believability. At least to me. Like, I’m hardly normal. I was never that much of burden on my parents, but I have never mixed very well with other people. I’m telling you this, because I think I’m sympathizing with the brother in a way I’m supposed to.

I really loved this movie. Thus far it has been a very simple movie. The last act is a little different, but it also builds on the emotional core of the movie in a way that I couldn’t have expected. While surprise isn’t really an important ingredient in a movie like this, this specific movie does it in a great way.

I still haven’t seen all the movies I would like to see from last year, but I would say that this is the best movie of 2025.

But spoilers.

So, the last third of the movie is 20 years into the future, sort of. The little girl is now a filmmaker who has gathered a team of professional to discuss his brother’s case. Her main question is how the approaches to the situation have evolved during this time. Then it gets a little weird for a moment. The filmmaker goes to visit her home, but 20 years in the past, when his brother was first put into foster care. Since no-one knows who she is, she takes on the role of the social worker who was there to make the decision on this. She also goes for a walk with his brother, and this might be the first time he says anything in the movie.

Also, we learn that he has just died in the present after spending many, many years in the “system”. So, the imagined discussion she had with him was something she would never get to really have. It was too late for that. But she also gets to learn that he had a more complex life outside of what they were aware of. He had friends, hobbies, and so forth. Those just got lost in the shuffle.