In the cold of the night...

A Family Affair is a folk tale through the lens of a psychological horror film, following the legend of the Drifter, an old lady wandering the wilderness through the night in search of her lost son Jonas. With a worn face and eyes that pierce the darkness, the Drifter belongs to the peripheries of the world.

On Christmas Eve, as a blizzard sweeps across the land, a family of three finds her knocking at the door of their isolated cabin seeking shelter, but things are not as they seem as they wearily decide to let her stay the night. As she tells them the story of her lost son Jonas, the pieces behind her story fail to line up in a horrifying way, and the thin line seperating reality from fantasy begins to blur. While the parents of the family worry about the wellbeing of their child Henry with the Drifter in their house, Henry finds a strange connection with the Drifter.

But something sinister and larger than any of them is simmering beneath the surface. Something is slowly pulling them out into the night...

Director's Statement

At its heart, A Family Affair is about the ways in which we imagine the world to be in contrast with reality, and how this dynamic informs familial relationships. How do we project our own beliefs and desires onto our families, and how does this inform what it means to be a mother, a father, a child? How do we desire and imagine those within our family to be, and where does that conflict with reality of our family member's individual lives? Most of all, it’s an examination into how all of this falls most heavily on children. A Family Affair is an attempt to extract this formative drama and understand what can makes it so deeply unsettling and horrifying for many.

As a gay man, this is a dynamic I’ve always been acutely aware of. Queer children are forced from a young age to grapple with the divide between how they’re perceived and what’s expected of them and the reality they live, and specifically how horrifying that can be in the wrong circumstances. It’s for this reason that I’ve brought on primarily other queer creatives for the cast and crew of A Family Affair. The psychological horror this story is trying to unearth is something I believe falls more heavily on people like me, so I believe it’s only right that it’s created and told by fellow queer individuals.

Our Team

 

 

Kyle Mangione-Smith is a filmmaker from Seattle, WA and is currently a Senior at Emerson College in Boston, MA studying film. Over the past five years, he's focused on creating surrealist, psychological horror films, a number of which have played at film festivals across the country. He has a passion for long drives through the night, loud aggressive music, and black and white street photography. He is the writer and director of A Family Affair and would love nothing more than to get under your skin.

 

 

Sarah Duval is a Senior at Emerson College where she studies Visual and Media Arts production. With her time at Emerson, she has been on the producing team for 9+ films and web series, including being the producer for the BFA Thesis film Susurrus, and prodocuing her own BFA over the last year. When she is not producing, she enjoys performing with her comedy troupe Police Geese, watching obscure horror movies, and volunteering to work with kids and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

 

 

Jordan Breveleri is a filmmaker from Boston, MA and is currently a Junior at Emerson College. While at emerson he has dedicated his time to studying light, and cinematography. He has a passion for colors, moody lighting, and shadows. Jordan is the cinematographer for A Family Affair, he is looking forward to helping bring this project to life.

 

 

Born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Bia moved to Miami, FL, at the age of 16 and decided to come to Emerson to pursue a Media Production degree. At Emerson, she found her passion lied in Production Design, Art Direction, and Set Decoration. She's worked in over 20 film sets at Emerson, half of them as Production Designer. She is set to graduate in May 2020 and wishes to continue to pursue Art Team related positions in film and TV.

Budget

 

Total Budget: $6,500