ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Pernille Bervald Joergensen:
Pernille Bervald Joergensen was born in 1987. She has grown up in the small Danish
town Hadsund.
Blood Ties is her debut documentary film.
From2007 – 2008, Pernille attended the European Film College in Ebeltoft.
In 2010, she received a grant from the Danish Foreign Ministry, and went to Sierra Leone
in Africa in order to make the documentary: ”Forsoningens Dilemma”; a film about a child
soldier and his victims.
The film recieved a prize as the best granted film.
In June 2013 she graduates as TV Director from the Danish School of Media and
Journalism.
Christian Sønderby Jepsen:
Christian er født i 1977 og opvokset i Tarm. Christian har rejst i hele verden og har blandt
andet læst på arkitektstudiet inden han landede på filmskolens dokumentar afdeling hvor
han blev uddannet i 2007. Siden da har han instrueret en lang række film. Udover
"Blodets Bånd" 2013, har han blandt andet stået bag film som den prisvinderne
"Testamentet" fra 2011, "Fuglekongerne" 2010 om magtkampen inden for ornitologi,
”Min Fætter er Pirat” 2010 om pirateri i Somalia og ungdomswebserien ”Doxwise”.
Christian debuterede i 2009 med filmen, ”Side om Side” om en nabokonflikt i Tarm.
Debutfilmen indbragte ham ligeledes flere priser.
Christian Soenderby Jepsen
Christian was born in 1977 and grew up in Tarm, an even smaller town in the western part
of Jutland, Denmark. Christian has traveled extensively all over the world and has
attended both the School of Architecture and the University before he ended up at The
National Film School of Denmark, majoring in documentary film making, from which he
graduated in 2007. Since then he has directed more than a few films. Apart from "Blood
Ties" 2013, he has been behind the award-winning “The Will” 2011,"Fuglekongerne"
2011, ”My Cousin the Pirate” 2010 about piracy in Somalia and the web documentary
series “Doxwise” 2009. Christian had his debut in 2009 with “Side by side” about two
conflicting neighbors. This film also got him a number of international prizes.
Motivation
By Pernille Bervald Joergensen
”I’ve known Svend and his family my whole life. Svend used to work for my father but he
was always more than a colleague, he was a close friend of the family. I thought of him as
the “funny uncle”, as someone, who was always pulling our legs and who loved to give us
presents. Even though I was aware that he was an alcoholic, he was not like the other
drunks in the streets of my hometown. He was so much more than that. He was bighearted, and had a humble approach to life, in general, and to people around him. He
always openheartedly shared his own odd experiences and talked about the many colorful
stories, he so often found himself part of. My father was always shaking his head at him,
but Svend was loyal to us, both to my father and the rest of our family, so we accepted him
for what he was.
In 2008 when I attended the European Film College, one of the assignments was making
a 7 minutes documentary. So I went back to Hadsund, together with two of my friends, to
shoot a portrait of this colorful man that I knew so well from my childhood. That was when I
realized that there are two sides to every story. Because it is one thing to be Svend’s
colleague and friend, and something completely different being his child.
We all know someone, who is an alcoholic or an addict, but what is it like being child to
one? Children love their parents unconditionally, no matter who they are or what they do.
Being an alcoholic is not the same as being an evil person even if their actions are often
very selfish. A child of an alcoholic somehow manages to separate the person from all the
selfish acts, and is therefore able to forgive them again and again. If this is all you’ve ever
known, then this is the only picture you have of what it means to be an adult. Then
obviously these children find it hard to say no and to set their own boundaries. It simply
becomes harder to know right from wrong.
It took me a long time to realize that alcoholics often gather in little closed circles. Even
though the town you come from is a small one, you don’t necessarily really know people –
even if you think you do and you say you do. Birds of a feather flock together. That’s why
people get together with others, who share the same interests as them. A child of an
alcoholic grows up among adults, who share the same norms and values as their parents
and therefore this is the value system that the child relates to and approaches life with.
Or as Svend likes to say: Small children, small problems - big children, big problems.
Because one day the children grow up, and when they do, they realize that their loyalty
and their love have been used, and that there are other versions of childhood than the one
they know. Then the truth and the lies are all mixed up and it becomes difficult to figure out
what life is all about. Many begin adulthood knowing that they can’t trust those closest to
them nor those around them. And this happens despite the fact that these families and
their children have been closely observed and followed by the Danish welfare system.
It is therefore my hope that this film will draw attention to socially burdened families in
Denmark, both in terms of alcohol abuse and forcible removal of children”.
Motivation
By Christian Soenderby Jepsen
“I agreed to direct this film because it is a very important story.
Right from the beginning, I was excited about the story of Svend, this alcoholic father, who
at first glance reminded me of the “funny uncle”, always full of tricks and tales. But within
the own four walls of their home, the picture changes dramatically. Because it is not a lot
of fun being raised by an alcoholic father. And this is when the story becomes so much
bigger, because we all come from homes, where the family story is very different, when
seen from the outside, than from within. Behind closed curtains. Or is it perhaps the kind of
truths that neighbors are happy to ignore?
Repressions is an important theme of this film, the fact that it is tremendously difficult to
look at yourself objectively, and the fact that as a child you tend to more readily remember
stories told to you about your own childhood, than those locked in your own memory.
Oddly enough, Svend has succeeded in convincing himself and his entire family, that the
past wasn’t so bad at all. This film explores whether it is possible to reconstruct your own
past and to take the results seriously? Because sometimes it just seems so much easier to
shut things down than to open up for all those things that can be so painful to look at.
In a way, the people in this film are very aware of their own situation. Even Svend
eventually reaches the conclusion, that he probably hasn’t done things right. I hope the
film will lead to a discussion of what it means to be child of an alcoholic, or an addict, and
how one is supposed to deal with that reality. We all go through life in blinkers, partly blind
to certain areas of our own lives and perhaps this film can help inspire us to face the facts
and shift through some of the heavy luggage that so many families carry around on their
shoulders. The film itself does not provide a solution but to me it is a step in the right
direction, a motivation to take a close look at your own past and family, yet one more
time”.