09/07/2026 - Jan-Eric Mack’s film, the first Swiss title ever in the Crystal Globe competition, follows the unraveling of a mother after her two children are sent to foster care

For his solo debut, Jan-Eric Mack makes history with A Happy Family, billed as the first Swiss film ever selected for Karlovy Vary's Crystal Globe competition. Despite an intriguing premise, the film falls short in letting us connect with Mack's Swiss single-mother protagonist, Niki (Anna Schinz), largely owing to a clunky script (credited to Schinz, Nikita Afanasjew, Eva Kienholz and Mack). Over a two-hour runtime, A Happy Family shifts from social drama to thriller and, eventually, to oddity, with our sympathy for Niki dwindling in light of her antics.

Struggling, working two jobs and mired in debt for reasons unknown, Niki is closely monitored by social services over the care of her children, Leonie (Annalisa Ferriani) and young Jimmy (Lir Kunkel). After a kitchen fire breaks out in her absence, the two are sent to live across the country, under the care of Sabine (Julia Jentsch). Desperate, Niki takes a job at her children's school and befriends the local community, doing anything she can to stay close to them.

Niki's desperation as a mother seems built more on selfishness than care, and the outrageous scenarios she puts herself through are perhaps not quite outrageous enough to stick the landing. After breaking into a building to find out where her children are, and dyeing her hair, she manages to befriend Matthias (Michael Neuenschwander), who lets her – a total stranger – sleep on his couch. Yet A Happy Family plays these moments straight, lending the film a certain unbelievability.

As Niki's children begin to relish the small pleasures of their new life, they also start to recognise the turbulence of her behaviour, and reject it – which becomes the film's most heartbreaking element. Switzerland is rendered as drab as possible, filtered through a distinctly working-class lens. Fittingly, cinematographer Yunus Roy Imer maintains a dark visual mood for nearly the entire film, only opening up to picturesque mountain landscapes near the end.

A Happy Family feels like neither a portrait of how the system fails its own citizens nor a genuine character study. The screenplay seems intent on forcing a harmonious resolution onto a tale that was never meant to end that way, settling for an aspirational "things will work themselves out regardless" message. Had we been allowed to get closer to Niki's struggle, and to feel her love for her children in a more tangible sense, we might have been able to make peace with the tonally peculiar ending.

A Happy Family is a Swiss production by C-Films AG. Bendita Film Sales handles international distribution.