Canadian director Shawney Cohen's film The Manor (2013) screened at the 16th Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival last week.

This award winning doc depicts the modern American family at its best, and worst. This is the story of Shawney Cohen's paradoxically functional family in all its dis-function. Shawney is a struggling filmmaker balancing between the world of film and his family run strip club. He is the designated manager of a strip club his father bought thirty years ago when he was six years old called 'The Manor'.

On the outside it would look like a thirty year family business with parents who are still together for more than 40 years are a modern day family success story. But the business is stripper women on display at their club and the family consists of Shawney's outcast brothers with parents who battle self-destructive eating disorders; his mother is anorexic and his father is obese at 400 pounds.

Shawney expresses a desire to leave The Manor and become a filmmaker, but if he leaves then who would manage the club with his parents being as afflicted with their diseases as they are? Shawney feels a great responsibility to see his parents get well before he goes in pursuit of his dreams; however, his parents seem incapable of change and content to live with their problems as they are.

Throughout the film, Shawney films his efforts to help his family through their problems, but to no avail. By the end of the film, his parents celebrate their 42 year wedding anniversary and we are left to wonder if his mother will ever get help for her delicate anorexic condition and if his father will continue to numb his problems and pain by gorging himself with food. Shawney admits: "For years I wanted my dad to give up the manor, but the truth is I can't imagine my life without it."

The Manor is a poignant and bittersweet true story about the American dream gone horribly wrong, and yet in its own fragile poetic way some things have gone so right.

Written by Vanessa McMahon

View trailer here:

AWARDS: Best Documentary (Honorable Mention) – Karlovy Vary IFF 2013, Czech Republic Best Editing – Woodstock FF 2013, USA Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) Award 2013 Best Pitch Winner – IDFA Forum 2012, The Netherlands Hot Docs Fund Award – Hot Docs FF 2012, Canada

Shawney Cohen