Borderline

Letters from Generation Rx

As a result of the 2008 documentary"Generation Rx," thousands of people wrote director Kevin P. Miller to share their experiences on psychiatric drugs. Miller combines their gripping tales with the latest mental health research, science, and medical health perspectives.

Billy

Billy is a film buff who films himself non-stop. During a film shoot, he meets Lawrence Côté-Collins and the two become friends. One night, he assaults her. Years later, in prison for the deaths of two people, Billy is diagnosed with schizophrenia. With the help of the filmmaker, his only remaining relationship apart from his family, his personal archives become an invaluable resource for understanding his illness. A formal deconstruction of schizophrenia through a remarkably open-minded gaze.

Feed Your Head

What causes mental illness? Do our thoughts, moods, and behaviours depend upon what we eat? Psychiatrists Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond met in Saskatchewan in 1951. They set out to prove that the symptoms of schizophrenia could be controlled with healthy, unprocessed food and large doses of vitamins. 60 years later, it looks like they may have been right.

Hold mig fast. Før jeg forsvinder

The Last Shore

In January 2017, a video showing a young Gambian man named Pateh Sabally drowning in the waters of Venice’s Grand Canal went viral on social networks. From the shore, passers-by could be heard insulting him, rather than attempting to help. 4,000 kilometres away, the voices and faces of his family tell the story that preceded this tragedy, the story behind the images.

DEPO: AKIL HASTANESİNDE HAYAT

Disconnected

Recovering from mental illness is a hard step to take, but what does it feel like to take this step?

Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging

Psychotropic drugs. It’s the story of big money-drugs that fuel a $330 billion psychiatric industry, without a single cure. The cost in human terms is even greater-these drugs now kill an estimated 42,000 people every year. And the death count keeps rising. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. Before these drugs were introduced in the market, people who had these conditions would not have been given any drugs at all. So it is the branding of a disease and it is the branding of a drug for a treatment of a disease that did not exist before the industry made the disease.

Three Identical Strangers

New York, 1980. Three complete strangers accidentally discover that they're identical triplets, separated at birth. The 19-year-olds' joyous reunion catapults them to international fame, but also unlocks an extraordinary and disturbing secret that goes beyond their own lives – and could transform our understanding of human nature forever.

Executing the Insane: The Case of Scott Panetti

Scott Panetti was tried for the capital murder of his parents-in-law on September 8, 1992 in Gillespie County, Texas. He was subsequently sentenced to death on September 22, 1995. Panetti has an extensive history of mental illness, including schizophrenia, manic depression, auditory hallucinations and paranoia. Panetti was hospitalized, both voluntarily and involuntarily for mental illness fourteen times in six different hospitals before his arrest for capital murder in 1992. Following his conviction, Panetti’s former wife, and daughter of the victims, Sonja Alvarado, filed a petition stating that Panetti never should have been tried for the crimes as he was suffering from paranoid delusions at the time of the killings.

The rejected

A documentary, divided into "chapters", about the life of the inmates of the asylum on Leros. From the point of view that the mentally ill are victims of social oppression, the film turns a harsh light on the psychiatric system and offers pointed criticism of the policies that produce such inhuman conditions.

Häxan

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. But the film itself is far from serious-- instead it's a witches' brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.

Sparni

It’s the second semester of junior year for Pierce “Sparni” Sparnroft, a gifted jazz vibraphonist studying at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Sparni’s prospects on the vibes were rejuvenated by their new professor, the world-renowned Steve Nelson, and are to be showcased during a student-driven recital in May 2023. But all the while, Sparni must face a crisis within.

The Forgiveness

Andrés Rabadán was headline news after killing his father with a crossbow. But beyond the chatter of the media, what is the true story of the young man who became known as the “maniac with the crossbow”?

My Depression (The Up and Down and Up of It)

Based on Elizabeth Swados’ picture book of the same name, this animated short film charts one woman's struggle with depression.

What About Petey?

After the sudden death of his wife, the film's protagonist, Mr. Jochec, must take on the responsibility of caring for his two teenage children—his daughter Vanesa and his son Petr, who has a severe autism spectrum disorder. Previously often working away from home, Mr. Jochec now has to manage everything on his own, keeping his family together.

Warrendale

Filmed over five weeks at the Warrendale residential treatment center near Toronto, "Warrendale" observes twelve emotionally disturbed children and the staff who care for them. Working without narration, interviews, or direction, Allan King records daily life as it unfolds, establishing what he later described as “actuality drama.”

Trans - La confusion des genres

Belief: The Possession of Janet Moses

This impressive doco disperses the fog of shame and sensationalism to shed light on the tragedy that made international headlines in 2007 when a young Wainuiomata woman died during a mākutu lifting.

Days of Madness

Days of Madness portray an incredible odyssey of two mentally diverse and unjustly rejected people who are learning to accept it, faced with the blindness of the society and the health system that made them addicts.