Sundance Film Festival 2024: Brief History of a Family (World Cinema Dramatic Competition) | Review

Lin Jianjie’s debut feature Brief History of a Family, premiering at Sundance 2024, dives into socioeconomic constraints, class prejudice, and unmet expectations in post one-child policy China.

The 40th Sundance Film Festival is in full swing and we are excited to be delving into this year’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition where we spotted the debut feature of Chinese filmmaker Lin Jianjie, an impressively confident and enigmatic thriller drama Brief History of a Family (Jia ting jian shi). A punishing look at strict parental indoctrination, the film paints unmet family expectations, untended emotions, and socioeconomic background of a middle-class Chinese family, whose fate becomes disrupted and intertwined when their son brings a new friend home, after the government enacts one-child policy.

Shuo (Sun Xilun) is 15, a quiet and independently-minded teenage boy who comes from a troubled background, living only with his alcoholic and abusive father after her mother died when he was a child, while Wei (Lin Muran) is an outgoing only son of a middle-class family; his father (Zu Feng) is a cell biologist, an assured and determined figure, and his mother (Guo Keyu) is a former flight attendant, generous but sometimes reticent. Shuo and Wei find themselves connected after an incident at their high school, Wei invites Shuo to his home to play video games and introduces him to his parents, at first they feel shadowed by Shuo’s existence but things turn out when Shou’s father accidentally dies. The boy might go to the orphanage but luckily Wei’s parents welcome Shuo to spend more time in their home. As Shuo slowly integrates into Wei’s family life, past wounds and present anxieties surface at the dinner table.

Writer-director Lin Jinjiae sets up Brief History of a Family as an intimate dissection of the societal constraints and examination of the class structure of China’s moneyed status, drawing that one’s harmonious family can evolve (or clashes) on multiple levels through the existence of a micro figure, but with Zhang Jiahao’s dark, damply atmospheric, and stunning cinematography, the film suggests that something more complicated and destabilizing than class prejudice is lying in wait, just beyond the thin wall.

On the surface, Brief History of a Family is a drama film about family relationships, but below the surface is an enigmatic thriller mystery that showcases misunderstood and social dysfunction towards the economic system in a perfectionist family. With a clever, satisfying, and delicate directing style, Jianjie brings a moody and minimalist setup to the table, letting the characters and elements build the tension, and works perfectly with Danish composer Toke Brorsin Odin’s transfixing music, who previously scored Hlynur Palmarson’s debut feature Winter Brothers.

In the wake of its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Lin Jianjie’s Brief History of a Family will go on to the Berlinale’s Panorama section for its European premiere. The picture is produced by China’s First Light Films, France’s Films du Milieu, and Denmark’s Tambo films, with Berlin and Lyon-based Films Boutique managing its sales.