A story of three sisters growing up with grief, DAUGHTERS by Jenifer Malmqvist premiered on March 28th at CPH:DOX. Below find a review published on Business Doc Europe by Nicole Santé.
Daughters is both a heart-wrenching and cathartic documentary about three sisters who have lost their mother to suicide. Filming the girls over a long period of time, connecting the past to the present through memories, it shows the impact of grief on young children and the importance of love, connection and communication.
Sofia was just eight, her sister Hedvig turned ten that very day and half-sister Maja was sixteen on the day that mother Carolina took her life. Not even a year later filmmaker, Jenifer Malmqvist had met the girls and had started filming them. She managed to earn their full trust, which is obvious given how the girls seem completely authentic and unaware of her camera.
The first scene sets the tone. The youngest girls are playing hide and seek on a summer’s day – you can almost feel the warmth and smell the blossoms because of the light and the saturated colours, the melancholic sounds of children playing and birds singing. In another scene the girls go through photographs of their beautiful and vibrant mother – ‘how pretty she is!’ Then it’s dinnertime at the table of their grandmother, who is brought to tears when the youngest, Sofia, realises her children will not have a grandmother.
The images of the year following their mother’s death exude sadness and incomprehension but also togetherness, warmth and love. The girls play together, talk about their mother, how they’re coping and that they regret ever having fought with her. We see more of Sofia and Hedvig, as they stayed together after their mother’s death.
At their father’s house boat they try and pick up the pieces – Hedvig finds consolation in animals and nature and Sofia dresses up, spending hours drawing and painting. Maja maybe struggles most – she’s the one who found her mother and feels the weight of the responsibility for her two younger sisters. Only when she’s with her best friend, in the stable grooming horses, she can speak about her feelings – it is telling her friend starts crying while she keeps her composure.
The film alternates between the past and a present in which the girls are talking with each other on a boat. The conversation is therapeutic and confronting: Maja still won’t talk about what happened with other people, Hedvig says she’s doing fine and Sofia is finally getting counseling.
As the film continues, the past literally takes up less and less space – the present and the future take over. Talking about the day that changed their lives forever, and which they all seem to remember in a different way, seems to give the sisters a sense of relief.
Malmqvist handles the very delicate matter with the utmost care. She quietly observes but not from a distance: she makes you feel you’re out there hiding behind a bush in the garden, splashing around in a sun-drenched lake, walking around the old house recollecting what it used to look like, waiting for Sofia to exit her middle school for the very last time. Just like the girls, we don’t notice she’s there, so they just naturally talk, laugh and cry, and allow us to bear witness to their incredible strength, empathy, wisdom, resilience and love for each other.
The director stays clear of sentimentality, avoiding tears. She does use music but its use is tempered and not overly dramatic. She shows the girls in a beautiful light both literally and metaphorically, without glorifying them. It is a documentary built on empathy and respect and a willingness to really listen and learn about what it means to lose someone in this way.
Written by Nicole Santé
Published on Business Doc Europe on the 29th of March, 2022.
