This article describes and explores from an analytic perspective three European cinematic masterpieces: Pasolini's Theorem (Italy, ), Moretti's The Son's Room (Italy, ), and Vinterberg's Festen (Denmark, ). While these works are very different in the personalities of their characters, the stories they tell, and the filmic language in which they are presented, they also have much in common: in all of them their protagonists are families suffering traumatic losses that will have a dramatically disruptive impact on their members.