Private Project

Family Reunion

At 36, Jean meets his father for the first time—not in the flesh, but on flickering Super 8 reels of long-forgotten family reunions. The director embarks on a journey through memories and missing pieces, weaving together the portrait of an absent father through the voices of those who once knew him. A deeply personal investigation, Family Reunion explores the echoes of inheritance, the weight of absence, and the power of film to resurrect the past.

  • Jean Forest
    Director
    The Last Days of April
  • Laurence Buelens
    Producer
    The end of Innocence (Petites), Still Alive (Rester Vivants)
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Réunion de Famille
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Documentary, Short
  • Runtime:
    24 minutes 27 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    February 28, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    116,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Belgium
  • Country of Filming:
    Belgium, France
  • Language:
    French
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1.5:1 (3:2)
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Distribution Information
  • World rights available
Director Biography - Jean Forest

Jean Forest is a Brussels-based filmmaker and visual artist whose work blends documentary, animation, and experimental storytelling. His films, often shaped by international residencies, explore memory, landscapes, and the intersection of reality and fiction. He co-directed Les Derniers Jours d’Avril with Laurence Buelens, a documentary filmed in Palestine. His latest film, Réunion de famille, is an animated documentary now completed. In addition to his personal projects, he runs Studio Forest, collaborating with major cultural institutions and broadcasters like Arte and Bozar.

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Director Statement

On 14 June 1987, on the way home from a family reunion, the car in which my father, mother, brother and I were travelling deviated from its course. A week later, we are still in hospital, my mother is waking up from her coma, my father is dead and buried, but we don’t know it yet. I am two years old, my brother five, my mother twenty-nine, my father thirty-one. It is a tragedy. And yet until recently it didn’t really affect me. I have no memory of the accident, not of my father, not of the year before, not of the year after. I was told the story. It happened, full stop. There followed a long silence, the silence of survival.

This film aims to break the silence, to reanimate the story, 35 years after the fact. By seeking answers to personal questions: Who was my father? What happened on the day of the accident? My reflection opens on the aftermath: What trajectories do our lives take when they break up? How do we mourn the loss of someone we never knew? What can we create from the void left by death?