2019 Film Festival
film synopsis
Before Elan and Jonathan Bogarín became inventive filmmakers, they were the grandchildren of Annette Ontell, an ordinary woman who resided in an unassuming New Jersey house at the titular address. Over the years, the siblings regularly interviewed their grandmother and, when she died at 93, they made a startling decision — they would treat her house as the site for an archaeological excavation. What emerges is a fascinating, genre-bending, and visually ravishing documentary that mixes elements of the fantastic with a heartfelt consideration of one woman’s life, a film that puts to rest the idea that Ontell — or anyone else, for that matter — is merely “ordinary.” By constructing striking tableaux with the objects they uncover, alternating between the mundane and the ghostly, and playing with mood and visual style, the Bogaríns create a mesmerizing world that both honors their grandmother and proves again that everyone has a fascinating story just waiting to be told.