Brendan Cooney

Within the Pines

Sam Evans, an experienced sound recordist, travels to an isolated forest in order to capture sounds far away from the noise of civilisation. As Sam ventures deeper, his mic picks up a sound no one wants to hear while alone in the woods.

Daddy

Brendan, an American anthropologist, used to wander the planet exploring human nature in all its forms and beauty. But today, he has to embark on a very different project. After falling in love with a Danish woman, he ends up a stay-at-home dad of two toddlers in Copenhagen, and his own boring life as a caregiver becomes his only object of study. Once unable to conform to a conventional lifestyle, he now discovers the few joys and many hardships of child rearing, as well as the bizarre culture of hygge that surrounds him. Abandoned by his mother as a kid, Brendan swore to never inflict the same trauma on his children, but he suddenly understands the prison she found herself in: “We need to find another word than love for this,” he ponders. Filmed over five years, this tragicomic diary is a relatable, taboo-free look at the exquisite torture of parenthood.