Light Falls Vertical review – startling domestic violence memoir goes deep into past trauma

Jarring and heartbreaking documentary excavates the film-maker’s past while illuminating an abuser’s place in the cycle of violence

Enveloped in a sonic cocoon of gentle ocean waves and rustling wind, the sensorial opening of Efthymia Zymvragaki’s feature-length debut could be mistaken for the start of a picturesque nature documentary. Zymvragaki’s film, however, excavates the pain buried beneath such scenic beauty: after escaping her abusive childhood home in Crete, Zymvragaki – now living in Spain – is transported back to her past by an unusual proposal. She receives a confessional memoir from Ernesto, a Tenerife resident with a troubled history of abuse against women.

As Zymvragaki and Ernesto work together to bring his life to the screen, their stories collide in startling, heartbreaking ways. Both grew up under a domineering father who exercised a tyrannical control over his family. The coercive patterns were terrifyingly similar, alternating between periods of cold detachment and violent rage. In connecting the distant islands of Crete and Tenerife with this cycle of sorrow, Zymvragaki and Ernesto’s revelations lay bare the curse of intergenerational trauma.