A personal essay documentary about the tangled bonds, secret histories and unspoken traumas of family life, The Silences stretches from New Zealand to the Australian suburbs in its exploration of early childhood and the silences of the past that resonate in the present. Drawing upon a wealth of photographs, letters, oral histories, documentary footage and clips from filmmaker Margot Nash’s previous work, it unfolds a triptych of tales in tandem: a mother’s story of lost opportunities, lost love and grief; a father’s story of work, mental illness and war; and a daughter’s story of trying to piece together a more complex picture of the confusing ties of love, loss and kinship between a mother and child.

The Silences is preceded by the shorts Strudel Sisters (Hegedus and Kalifa, 2016, 7 minutes) and The Limited (Elena, 2016, 11 minutes).

Introduced by director Margot Nash.