It’s morning time. A family wakes up and gets ready to leave the house: a middle class family with smartphones, laptops and a comfortable home. This leisurely process unfolds in ordinary everyday routines: children having a bath, breakfast, fun and games, babies crying. The father looks at a map on his computer, enormous suitcases start flying down the stairs. Everything suggests that the family is getting ready to go off on holiday. Shot as a classic fiction film, “Home” begins in this banal style, encouraging the audience to mistrust: what could be wrong with this normal family? The temptation to dive into melodrama is well-known, but this narrative takes an abrupt turn when suddenly, rather than going on holiday, the parents and children are locked into car boots – of their own free will. A new saga begins for the family in this very dark satire on the harrowing and dangerous journeys made by refugees to Europe. In “Home”, everything is turned upside down: it is the “perfect” white, middle class family and their children who have to leave their home in search of a better future. Essentially, what survives are the actual bonds between these four human beings, even after all the privations of the journey. With a number of short films already under his belt, this is the first time Daniel Mulloy has featured at Curtas Vila do Conde, offering a form of British realism that is a real punch in the stomach. (DR)