The Fam

A group of young girls, each with a troubled family background, are forced together under the roof of a residential care home. In this new “family” under the supervision of social workers, both tension and solidarity are not missing. As a matter of fact, an incident that takes place in the safe house triggers a chain of reactions. The conflict in question will gradually shake the administration of the care home. Director Fred Baillif, a former social worker, acts in collaboration with his young actors while conveying this world he knows well to the audience. He brings the characters shaped by their suggestions to the screen with a documentary realism. The Fam openly reveals the problems of the system that was built to protect the youth.

FRED BAILLIF

Fred Baillif is a former basketball player and DJ, who moved to New York after his retirement from basketball, where he worked as a PA on documentary series The It Factor. When he returned to Switzerland, he bought a DV camera and directed his first documentary Sideman, about New Yorkbased Swiss harmonica player Grégoire Maret. His second documentary, Geisendorf, received the Best Documentary Award at Visions du Réel in 2006. His first fiction feature film was in 2010: Tapis Rouge, a no budget film made with teenagers from a Lausanne suburb. In 2017, he directed his second feature film, Edelweiss Revolution, a comedy with Jean-Luc Bideau and Irène Jacob.