In this autobiographical work, Tony Asimakopoulos brings the viewer into one of the most intimate parts of his personal life: his family. Overcoming a difficult period of addiction, he explores the depths of the at-times-oppressive relationships he has with his family. With camerawork whose intimate forays border on prying and editing that splices in clips from his student films, Tony studies his subjects with a finely tuned sense of self-criticism. His anxious and overpowering mother who tries to fix every problem with a hearty meal; his father, reserved and still wounded by his son’s suffering. Their relationship to the home country, the Greece they left behind—their memories of it, both the painful ones, and the ones filled with the smell of the sea and the infinite sky overhead. And love, this avenue to salvation that we can grab onto and use to pull ourselves out of the nest, to the detriment of a luminous fiancée who finds herself neck-deep in a family dynamic that, while suffocating and dysfunctional, resounds with a boundless love. With his dogged filming over long-term periods that verges on intrusion, Tony’s startling film, serving as an attempt towards both reconciliation and absolution, shows us the sinuous, complex and intricate paths that our family life takes.

Bearing witness to the small points of repeated tension that can put even the strongest love to the test, Fortunate Son awakens the sentiment in its viewers that, for better or for worse, it may be impossible to undo the ties that bind the deepest parts of ourselves to our families.

Nadine Gomez
Filmmaker