Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s harrowing autobiographical feature is like a compelling puzzle. The child actor turned documentary filmmaker starts out by showing his filmmaker father Henry’s home movies. Those movies showed them and their family. As these things go, there’s something sinister about this family. And it’s up to the audience to figure out the bad apples within this bunch.

Sometimes the footage shows Sasha and his sister Becky’s more innocent moments. And at others, it would show Sasha acting out. We never see him during episodes we might consider his worst. And that’s where his mother Jacqui’s occasional narration comes in. There’s an awareness here or the incomplete nature of home videos, that they never show their subjects’ pain.

This feature, Rewind, eventually contrasts that footage with contemporaneous ones. There, Sasha and Jacqui slowly reveal the reason why he acted out as a kid. Both eventually grapple with the sexual abuse that he, Becky, and Henry endured from their uncles and cousin. Incorporating this contemporaneous footage gives this feature a sense of clarity towards its tough subject.

Some interview segments feel strange, like ones where Henry addresses Sasha in the third person. It’s as if they’re talking to him, the director, as if he’s not in the room. There’s also something, and maybe it’s the occasional score beats. That adds a sentimentality when Sasha and Henry discuss what or who introduced them to healthy versions of love.

But those flaws don’t really muddle up Rewind’s message. The feature, again, is part of a festival that highlights the personal side of human rights abuses. But it also shows the macro side of it. Institutions like medical and legal ones both hurt and help children experiencing abuse. This feature, then, is Sasha’s way of fighting for children’s rights.

For more information on Rewind go to https://www.hrff.ca/rewind.