Bay Area-raised director turns lens on her family

Documentary filmmaker Sarah Gross turns the camera on her own biracial Bay Area family in “Brown Bread,” which screens Sunday at the Roxie in San Francisco.

Gross was just 3 years old when she and her older brother were introduced to the first of four children of color adopted by their lawyer father and their mother, a British furniture designer-turned minister.

“For me, this film was about untangling this very specific and completely idiosyncratic story of how we struggled to become a family,” Gross says. “‘Brown Bread’ is about family and race and identity and how, in a way, all families are dysfunctional.”

The first time Gross made a short film about her family — for a Harvard University student project — she met resistance at home. This time around, her siblings were more forthcoming. Gross says it helped that she used a mini DV camera and shot without a crew.

“It was a one-person show,” Gross says. “Being able to shoot this way affirmed the choice because it was so private and intimate. People were really able to open up.”

Gross, who now lives in Berlin with her husband and three children, says she hopes “that people who have not necessarily been touched by adoption can see the film and think about their own identity and how they relate to their own clans.”