Film

Inheritance

Name: Inheritance
Genre: Drama
Released: 2017
Cast: Jessica Kaye, Daniel Ahearn, Mark Webber, Shamira Gill-Card, Myrna Manzanares

Other titles called Inheritance: the 2020 film.

Family drama

A woman returns to Belize for her estranged father's funeral, bringing her boyfriend into the emotional minefield of family she fled. Director Lex Lada crafts a slow-burn character study about how grief and distance erode connection. It's patient, intimate, and sometimes difficult—for people who find revelation in quiet moments and uncomfortable truths.

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like quiet family dramas where the tension lives in what people leave unsaid, and a short, closely observed film about grief and old wounds will hold you more than a plot would.

Skip it if you need a story that moves briskly or resolves its conflicts neatly; this one lingers in awkward silences and unhurried scenes, and some viewers will find that tiresome rather than rewarding.

What it asks of you: Seventy-six minutes of patience with slow, observational scenes and a mood that stays muted and heavy, so you will need to pay close attention to faces and pauses.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Manchester by the Sea2016

Kenneth Lonergan captures how trauma lives in a body, how brothers carry each other's weight. The quietness is the whole point: grief doesn't perform, it just sits with you at the kitchen table.

But Deliberately paced and emotionally heavy. If you need plot momentum or uplift, this will feel like it's deliberately withholding both.

The Farewell2019

Like Inheritance, it examines how diaspora and family secrets create distance, using homecoming as the crucible. Lulu Wang finds both comedy and ache in the space between cultures and generations.

But The tonal shifts between comedy and tragedy might feel uneven if you're looking for consistency. Some find it precious or overly quirky.

Minari2021

Isaac Lee explores how families fracture under the weight of aspiration and displacement. A multi-generational portrait that finds tenderness in failure and regret, with a quiet power.

But Very slow, very internal. The conflict is emotional rather than plot-driven, which some find frustrating or even boring.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Inheritance

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl2015

Both films use homecoming—literal or emotional—to excavate the moment when family became unbearable. Both trust the audience to sit with uncomfortable truths about desire and distance.

Marielle Heller's film about a girl discovering sex and autonomy in 1970s San Francisco uses collage, animation, and voice-over to make interiority visible. It's about messy bodies and messy families—how we learn desire and damage simultaneously.

But Sexually explicit and sometimes crude. The protagonist is sympathetic but also self-destructive in ways that can feel unforgiving. Not a coming-of-age comfort story.

Begin Again2014

John Carney captures how two damaged people try to reach each other through music and vulnerability. It has Inheritance's sense of second chances and the terrifying risk of letting someone in.

But The romance can feel precious or overly indie. If synth folk scores make you roll your eyes, this will test your patience.

The Light Between Oceans2016

A couple on an island must face the moral weight of a secret. Like Inheritance, it's about how intimacy fractures under the pressure of things left unsaid.

But Visually ravishing but emotionally remote. The scale and beauty can overshadow the characters, leaving you admiring rather than moved.

Moonlight2016

A meditation on identity, shame, and the people we fail to say goodbye to. It moves through time the way memory does—fractured, incomplete, tender. Devastating without being loud.

But Painterly and oblique. Some viewers find it too slow or too fragmented to grab hold of emotionally.

A Ghost Story2017

David Lowery transforms domestic haunting into a portrait of grief and the impossibility of holding on. Quiet and strange and somehow funnier than it should be, with real emotional stakes.

But A man in a white sheet. If you can't suspend disbelief for that image, the metaphor collapses. Also genuinely slow—meditative borders on glacial.

The Son2022

Florian Zeller charts depression and family failure without sentimentality. It understands that sometimes people cannot save each other, and that's part of what families have to survive.

But Bleak and claustrophobic. The father-son relationship is so fractured that some find it punishing rather than cathartic.

First Reformed2018

Paul Schrader's study of a man in spiritual crisis. Like Inheritance, it finds the sacred in small conversations and the overwhelming weight of being present with another person's suffering.

But Philosophical and austere. Ethan Hawke's character is nearly impossible to like, and the film doesn't try to make him more palatable.

Retablo2018

Both excavate the father-child relationship through absence and return. Both are set in places far from where characters' lives were actually lived, using landscape as character.

Álvaro Fuentes' film about a retired painter in Peru who must confront his son's sexuality, told with visual poetry and folk tradition. It's a study of masculine vulnerability and how fathers sometimes fail their children in small, irreversible ways.

But Very slow. Subtitled. The resolution comes through acceptance rather than confrontation, which some find soft rather than earned.

The Second Act2024

Both challenge conventional narrative to explore internal states. Both ask what it means to inherit your own life—to recognize who you've become when the people who knew you young are gone.

Anaïs Demoustier's documentary-essay meditates on aging, obsolescence, and a woman's life after she stops being young. It's fractured, essayistic, sometimes funny—a collage of cinema, theory, and lived experience.

But Refuses narrative. It's an associative essay rather than a story, which means it demands active interpretation rather than passive watching.