A Year in the Life

The Mosher family are working class folks who live in a fading upstate New York town. Patriarch Don is a Vietnam vet who doesn't talk about how the war changed him, but that doesn't hide the fact that it did. His wife, Dottie, is cheerful and positive where he's silent. Their daughter, Donna, who was a teenage mother married to a jerk, is now herself the mother of a teenage mother, Daneal, and the wise-beyond-her-years Desi. And then there's Chris, the foster child Dottie took in, who is inexorably drifting into a life of crime. Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher's documentary October Country reveals what real life is like for an atypical but average American family over the course of a year. It's difficult, and exhausting, and disappointing, but you get through it because the alternative is worse. October Country screens at 7:30 p.m. Friday through Thursday (June 4 to 10) at Webster University's Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood Avenue; 314-968-7487 or www.webster.edu/filmseries). Admission is $5 to $6.
June 4-10, 2010