Name: Min Mamma Hade Fjorton Barn
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2001
Duration: 1 min 20 s

Brief Synopsis

Cast & Crew

Film Details

Also Known As

My Mother Had Fourteen Children

Genre

Documentary

Release Date

2001

Technical Specs

Duration

1h 20m

Synopsis

Pictures in a family album can at once hide and reveal the inner workings of a home. Through black-and-white photographs and recorded interviews with family members, this deceptively simple documentary presents the audience with an enigma that has haunted director Lars-Lennart Forsberg and his many brothers and sisters for years: Why did their mother, "the one who made the decisions," bear 14 children from 1917 to the 1930s, in spite of her poor health and the almost overwhelming financial burdens that resulted? Why did she willingly endure a series of births that changed her and her husband from a young, attractive couple with artistic ambitions to exhausted, overweight parents in a home too crowded for comfort? As one of his sisters comments, "At a very early age, I stopped expecting motherhood from mother and fatherhood from father." The mystery of their mother's personality is addressed without sensationalism or bitterness-or simple answers.