Fri May 25 | 7:00 pm | PC

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Directors: Morvary Samaré & Astrid Schau-Larsen, Norway, 2006, 87 minutes
Norwegian with English subtitles

World Premiere. Filmmakers in attendance.

An extraordinarily rare film, Remains portrays with haunting intimacy the lives of three adult siblings as they deal with the sexual abuse they suffered as young children. Trym, now 24, has been institutionalized numerous times for self-harming, depression and suicide attempts. His younger brother Stale, now 21, has left Norway and moved to Denmark in an attempt to rid himself of the painful memories of his childhood abuse. Their sister Camilla, 30, has also left the country and engaged in years of self-destructive behaviour.

With excruciating honesty they share their memories of childhoods ravaged by the sexual abuse they were subjected to by their father. Their mother Bente struggles with guilt over her inability to shield her children from what she suspected was the “truth” of their childhoods. The three siblings have been unsuccessful in seeking judicial redress with the Norwegian legal system largely because incest remains so taboo in Scandinavia that few believed their story.

The filmmakers raise questions about the rights of children and, in sharing the story of Trym, Stale and Camilla, describe the legacy of adult survivors of sexual abuse in which shame, guilt, thoughts of suicide, issues of sexuality, love and hate inform the ongoing fabric of daily life. Although much has been explored about child sexual abuse, Remains is a powerful and groundbreaking work of art, treading deeper than most previous films on the subject.