DNA (2020)

DNA is special because it treats grief not as a tidy arc but as a force that scrambles your sense of self, and Maïwenn films that upheaval with a raw, searching honesty. The movie has a contemplative, almost restless vibe—part intimate family chamber piece, part identity reckoning—where love and resentment sit at the same table and nobody quite knows how to leave. It’s moving in the way real life can be: messy, tender, occasionally unruly, with performances that feel lived-in rather than performed. If you prefer polished melodrama or clear-cut answers, this may frustrate you, but if you’re open to a thoughtful drama that follows emotion where it actually goes, DNA can linger in the mind like a memory you didn’t know you needed.

DNA is clearly aiming for an intimate, semi-autobiographical portrait of grief and fractured identity, using one woman’s bond with her Algerian grandfather as the emotional anchor. The problem is that it often feels more like you’re being told what to feel than discovering it alongside the characters, with family blowups that can register as controlled and oddly distant rather than raw and earned. If you want a drama with sharp character insight, narrative momentum, or catharsis that builds naturally, this may test your patience and come off as self-involved. Still, Maïwenn captures a specific mood of dislocation and longing, and if you’re drawn to messy family dynamics and identity questions more than plot, you may find moments that linger.