Nuclear Family

Directed By Ry Russo-Young

Ry Russo-Young turns the camera on her own past to explore the meaning of family.

  • ABOUT
  • BIO
Nuclear Family tells the extraordinary story of a pioneering young family and the forces that threatened its very existence. The three-part series follows Russo-Young‘s parents, Sandra Russo and Robin Young as they pioneered gay parenthood in the ’80s, and the legal battle that threatened to tear their family apart. Nuclear Family is a three-part documentary series following filmmaker Ry Russo-Young as she turns the camera on her own past to explore the meaning of family. In the late 70s/early 80s, when the concept of a gay family was inconceivable to most, Ry and her sister Cade were born to two lesbian mothers through sperm donors. Ry’s idyllic childhood was threatened by an unexpected lawsuit which sent shockwaves through her family’s lives and continues to reverberate today. The docuseries explores the extraordinary story of a first-generation lesbian family, from its origins in outlaw counterculture, to the mainstream court system’s attack on and ultimate defense of Ry’s and her moms’ rights and existence, ending in a landmark legal decision that would change the way gay families were perceived forever. At its heart, this story of epochal conflict is also a tale about empathy, as Ry investigates the ambitions and desires of her moms, her sperm donor, and all their allies and enemies as she struggles to hear and accept their divergent perspectives. In a world of deeply polarized thinking, the docuseries proposes a way of understanding conflict that resonates with anyone who struggles with issues unresolved within their own families, their own lives, and in our broader world.
Ry Russo-Young is currently in post-producton on her fourth feature, Before I Fall, based on the best-selling young adult book of the same name, about a high school senior (Zoey Deutch), who finds that she may be living the last day of her life again and again. Ry has been making independent films for eleven years; her work has premiered and won awards at several international film festivals including SXSW, Sundance, Stockholm, Torino and TriBeCa. You Won't Miss Me (2009) won a Gotham Independent Film Award and was released by Factory 25. Nobody Walks (2012), co-written with Lena Dunham and starring Olivia Thirlby and John Krasinski, won a special Jury Prize at Sundance and was released theatrically by Magnolia Pictures. Ry has received accolades from the New York State Council on the Arts, the TriBeCa Film Institute, the LEF Foundation, the Sundance Institute and Creative Capital. She majored in film at Oberlin College. Her next film will depict the complicated relationship between her lesbian parents and her sperm donor, tentatively titled The Family Movie.