
The Family I Had
Charity Lee raised her son Paris as a bright, precocious kid who wrote poetry and adored his little sister Ella. At thirteen, in a fit of rage, he killed her. The film follows Charity in the years after, through prison visits, home video of the children as toddlers, and interviews with relatives and the lead detective on the case, as she tries to reconcile the boy she loved with the act he committed. Rather than building toward a single explanation, the documentary sits with contradictions: Paris's diagnosed mental illness, Charity's own troubled childhood and choices as a young single mother, and a justice system that has no real place for a child who kills. Directors Katie Green and Carlye Rubin let Charity speak for long stretches, unedited and often self-critical, about guilt, forgiveness, and whether she can still call herself Paris's mother. It is a quiet, unresolved film about a family destroyed from within, not a true-crime mystery but a portrait of what survives after.