Artist and designer Yolanda Sonnabend has enjoyed her romantic, life-long bohemia in the family home worth millions on one of the world’s most expensive London streets. Now overtaken from decades of neglect with every inch of it crammed by artworks, books and bric-a-brac, Yolanda is both “a prisoner of rubbish” as well as of her own encroaching dementia.
Meanwhile, brother and world-famous New York AIDS physician, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, has reluctantly returned home to a sister, house and country he has little affection for. Into this heady mix comes filmmaker Thomas Burstyn who in filming his aunt and uncle affords us a rare encounter of a family as much in need of repair as the home in which they live. This is a world full of genius, passion and conflict in an ultimately tender portrait of love.