Orphans

The orphans of director-writer Peter Mullan's film are three brothers and a handicapped sister, who react to their mother's death in different ways on the night before the funeral. It becomes a dramatic night for all of them.

Orphans is an unpredictable and successful mixture of harsh realism as in a Ken Loach film and black comedy. The themes of death, mourning and the disintegration of a family are not exactly obvious material for a comedy, but Mullan does not care. The film manages to balance a more serious tone with a tragicomic humour.