Nira Burstein’s debut feature Charm Circle (which world premiered this week at Sheffield Doc Fest) is a family affair. The American director gets up close and very personal with her mother, father and sisters as she films verité-style in the old family home, which has seen better days. The audience learns about everything from her father Uri’s precocious musical ability to the family’s money problems and her mother Raya’s sex life, or lack of one. Burstein doesn’t hold back much.
“They [the family members] have seen multiple edits. I’m incredibly lucky to have a family that is so supportive of me creatively,” Burstein says. She acknowledges that it was “scary for sure” to make a documentary featuring such personal subject matter. “I forget who said it but ‘do work that scares you,’” she notes of the daunting challenge she set herself.
Her father sometimes gets very angry on camera. In spite of his musical skills and obvious artistic temperament, he ended up working in real estate. Her mother is shown in moments of vulnerability. Both parents, though, trusted that Nira would “give the full and complete story.” Her younger sister, who was about to have her polyamorous wedding, was equally confident that Nira would show her in a fair and positive light.
“I have empathy for everyone in my family. Everyone has their own story. I try to be with each person in that story; to be honest about who they are but, at the same time, always to be empathetic,” the director explains her method. “That’s how I feel in real life.”
She concedes that “this movie may make people feel little uncomfortable at times…but that’s OK. That’s just, again, the truth. And my parents know nothing was taken out of context. They respect that.”
In the film, her parents are continually shown struggling to make mortgage payments. Now, though, they’ve sold the house and the money problems have eased. “Moving out of the house and just letting all that baggage go has been a huge step forward for them.”
Burstein herself misses the old family home (“I was there from when I was 5 until I was 18, or something like that”) but also admits that “being there was always so difficult.”
Ask the director about cinematic inspirations for Charm Circle and she immediately volunteers that she was very strongly influenced by the Maysles brothers’ classic Grey Gardens, about a reclusive and highly eccentric mother and daughter living in a rundown mansion in the Hamptons. “I love that movie deeply. I think it’s a wonderful portrait. I love the verité style. I think there is something very eye-opening about that intimacy.”
The director shot her film over a period of six years – and was also able to draw on extensive home movies made by her parents throughout her childhood.
“I would visit and film – and that would be separate from the times when I would visit and not have a camera. I would visit once every two or three months, or something like that. Then, there would be times when I was filming three days in a row.”
The experience has brought the family closer together. They all bought into the idea of their daughter’s warts-and-all film about them. The film is also providing a welcome showcase for her father’s musical skills. “My dad makes music and he plays for himself and I just happen to be in the room. He gets so much joy out of just doing that on his own…now, with this platform, his music is out getting out there.”
In spite of the raw and intimate nature of Charm Circle, shooting wasn’t the problem. ”The difficult part is just getting the movie out there, right, finding a home for it – the normal struggles of filmmaking, I think,” the director reflects.
Burstein didn’t grow up expecting to become a filmmaker. “I was thinking I was going to be an occupational therapist like my mother, working with people with disabilities.” However, after watching, and falling in love with, Donnie Darko and ”taking it apart,” she decided to try filmmaking instead. Once she made that decision, she refused to be side-tracked. “Either subconsciously or consciously, I have put working in film or writing first.”
The intrepid Burstein braved quarantine regulations and border checks in order to get to Sheffield for her premiere. “Obviously, there’s a lot of Covid testing,” she says of the many hurdles she had to overcome to get to the festival where her film has been very warmly received.
