THE BOX Studio

Family Affairs is an Israeli documentary film directed by Gil Golan, which was released in 2013. The film tells the story of Gil, a treacherous man who came from a family where infidelity has always been an integral part of the relationship. Gil embarks on a documentary journey into the depths of family history on the question of whether it is possible to break the pattern that is passed down from generation to generation.

Taking language, the most important means of social interaction as his starting point, Mellors has created a visual spectacle which leads the viewer through the various phases of a script. As theatrical as it is absurd, the script relates the course of an expedition that set out in the year 1213. A band of starving explorers is trapped within a giant's body. Sent off by his followers the group's spiritual leader, The Father, attempts to find a way out through the giant's entrails. The Father returns to the group 'born-again', having survived by cannibalism and coprophagia (eating faeces). He 'recycles' himself and becomes potentially everlasting. This leads to reflections on his ontological situation and has bad implications for his followers as he becomes increasingly cultish and manipulative, claiming the group is not lost inside the body of a Giant, but inside the bowels of God...