Alexander Sokurov's Mother and Son (Mat i syn, 1997), Father and Son (Otets i syn, 2003) and Alexandra (2007) share many narrative and stylistic similarities. Their stories are simple and dialogue sparse: in the first film, a son cares for his dying mother; in the second, a father and son explore their emotional bond knowing that the latter will soon leave; in the last, a grandmother visits her grandson, most probably for the last time. As allegories of idealised familial relations, these films give a concrete, physical form to powerful emotions translated into audio-visual representations. In addition to their minimalist narrative, each film unfolds at a meditative pace reminiscent of the conventions of slow cinema in which typically ‘narrative interaction is dissolved in favour of sensory experience and aesthetic apprehension’ (de Luca 2014: 10). This contemplative approach opens the space necessary to observe, on the one hand, the details of the presented world and, on the other, the artificiality of its cinematic construction.

The family trilogy constitutes an intensified investigation into the trace of the material presence on screen by connecting the sensual to the physical- biological and the socio-political in three distinct ways. Firstly, haptic images – which ‘search the image for a trace of the originary, physical event’ (Marks 2002: xi) – emphasise the multisensory experience of the world and accentuate bodily sensations. Secondly, references to the discourse of medicine (particularly in Father and Son) introduce a scientific analysis of the physicality of the body. Thirdly, the films insistently examine presented worlds from different angles and proximities, frequently coming intimately close to their subjects. These techniques combine to produce moments when the materiality of the on-screen reality is heightened; in this sense, the trilogy echoes de Luca's discussion of ‘sensory realism’ (2014: 1) – an attempt to represent the sensual which takes precedence over the purely representational functions of images and sounds.

Mother and Son, Father and Son and Alexandra consciously underscore the simultaneous awareness of film as a medium carrying the story along with references to other means of expression.