CAPSULE:ACASA, MY HOME: ACASA, MY HOME is a documentary about a family which has been living in the Bucharest delta for twenty years, in a shack with few modern conveniences. (They do seem to have a generator, and cell phones, and they buy some items with money from selling fish in Bucharest.) They keep pigs and chickens, but also supplement their food with frogs, fish, and other animals. (Eating snake is a lot like eating fish but with more bones.) Then the government decides to turn the delta into a nature preserve, and the two cultures clash when the family must leave the delta and live in the city. (Actually, they have clashed before, and the children are adept at hiding from family services personnel in the high grass that is taller than the children.)
At times the viewer may question whether scenes has been staged. Some scenes (such as a warning telephone call and subsequent interactions with family services) seem like they must have been staged, especially given how they are edited with apparently multiple POVs. This is because the filming covers a very long period of time, and these scenes were probably not so much staged as pieced together from several incidents.
We are meant, I think, to sympathize somewhat with the patriarch, Gica, although he is not very likable, claiming in fact that he is the ruler of his children and can kill them if he wants to. But one of his sons says at one point that Gica fathered twenty children. Currently, only nine are alive. If this is not also hyperbole, then it is clear that this "idyllic" lifestyle is incredibly unhealthy and dangerous for his children.
Released 03/15/21 on various streaming services. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4), or 6/10.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11364376/reference
What others are saying: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/acasa_my_home
Mark R. Leeper Copyright 2022 Mark R. Leeper