The Filmmaker’s House

Serial killers, or anything to do with sex. These are the topics that filmmaker Marc Isaacs’ producer thinks he should be focusing on if he wants to have any chance of getting financing. Frustrated and recalcitrant, the documentary maker decides to create a film about and with the people around him: the builders who are putting up a new fence in his garden, his Pakistani neighbor, a homeless person from Slovakia whom he temporarily takes in, and his Colombian housekeeper, who has just lost her mother.

The film starts out as a classic documentary, but the viewer gradually gets the feeling of watching a scripted film. The theme of hospitality—both topical and important but hardly spectacular—is given an unexpected twist at the end that turns the entire film upside down. Isaacs thus criticizes the predictability of commercial documentaries; in contrast to the trend of tailoring facts to media formats, he presents fiction driven by authenticity. He shows how complex authorship can be—and that it is precisely what produces quality.