Echo

Love, Ava

March 2020 •English

Keenly aware that his niece is going through a particularly rough time at home, Uncle James teaches Ava Dee how to use the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. As an experiment, he tells her to shoot whatever she wants and he'll edit it into a film.

How to Use Dianetics

January 2009 •English

In this sprawling 33-part epic, Dianetics therapy and the effects it has on human minds are explored.

Voices from the Shadows

Invalid date •English

‘Voices from the Shadows’ shows the brave and sometimes heartrending stories of five ME patients and their carers, along with input from Dr Nigel Speight, Prof Leonard Jason and Prof Malcolm Hooper. These were filmed and edited between 2009 and 2011, by the brother and mother of an ME patient in the UK. It shows the devastating consequences that occur when patients are disbelieved and the illness is misunderstood. Severe and lasting relapse occurs when patients are given inappropriate psychological or behavioural management: management that ignores the severe amplification of symptoms that can be caused by increased physical or mental activity or exposure to stimuli, and by further infections. A belief in behavioural and psychological causes, particularly when ME becomes very severe and chronic, following mismanagement, is still taught to medical students and healthcare professionals in the UK. As a consequence, situations similar to those shown in the film continue to occur.

Flee

June 2021 •Danish

Recounted mostly through animation to protect his identity, Amin looks back over his past as a child refugee from Afghanistan as he grapples with a secret he’s kept hidden for 20 years.

Dépression, de l'ombre à la lumière

February 2020 •French

Zen & the Art of Dying

March 2015 •English

Zenith Virago is an activist and educator who for over 20 years has been returning the coastal region of Byron Bay, Australia to a more communal, celebratory, and creative engagement with death and dying.

The Wolf Suit

October 2021 •English

How much can you trust your childhood memories? Director Sam Firth investigates, sweeping her parents into the experiment and on a journey into the past.

The Last Stop

April 2017 •English

The Élan School was a for-profit, residential behavior modification program and therapeutic boarding school located deep within the woods of Maine. Delinquent teenagers who failed to comply with other treatment programs were referred to the school as a last resort. Treatment entailed harsh discipline, surveillance, degradation, and downright abuse. Years later, the patients who were institutionalized in this facility still carry the trauma they endured, with mixed opinions on the impact of their experience.

We Are Not Done Yet

November 2018 •English

Follows veterans and active-duty service members from varied backgrounds who come together to combat their traumas through the written word in a USO-sponsored arts workshop at Walter Reed National Military Hospital.

The Healing

November 2023 •English

An inspiring journey of recovery from two very different worlds. Set against the stunning backdrop of Kangaroo Valley in NSW, a revolutionary program brings together traumatised ex-racehorses and traumatised military veterans - to help rebuild each other, and transform lives.

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

April 2014 •English

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

Le chemin brut de Lisette et Romain

December 1995 •French

Self Made

September 2011 •English

In 2007, Gillian Wearing placed an advert – in newspapers, online, in job centers, and elsewhere. It read: “Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character. Call Gillian.” Of the hundreds of people who replied, seven – chosen through an extended process of auditions, interviews, and workshops – ended up appearing in Self Made. Of those seven, five in particular use the acting technique known as Method to delve into their memories, impulses, anxieties, fears, fantasies, and inner resources to create a series of individual performance vignettes, their personal ‘end scenes’, that reveal with particular intensity and clarity who they really are deep down – or who, in another version of their lives, they might easily have been.

Generation A: Portraits of Autism and the Arts

November 2015 •English

A documentary about young people with autism, and how arts and creative therapies help them to lead fuller lives.

Dosed 2: The Trip of a Lifetime

August 2022 •English

Laurie, a terminally ill cancer patient and loving mother of four, is granted the right to legally use magic mushrooms to treat her end of life anxiety. She then embarks on a remarkable journey of personal transformation and healing while exploring lesser known possible cures for cancer, like cannabis oil.

Liam

April 2018 •English

Just after Isidore moves to France to study filmmaking, his best friend dies back in the US. Through documentary, performance, and animation, a ghostly portrait emerges, prompting Isidore to question his relationships with his parents and his boyfriend in Paris.

Hoteliér

October 2013 •Czech

The film is not merely a record of rehearsals, but above all an intimate look at the relationships between its individual protagonists. Nor is it a classic documentary, because the line between acting, creation, and recording reality is too thin. The film thus reflects not only the aging of outstanding actors, but also their relationship to today's world and their disappointment with the current state of Czech film and theater. It speaks to their fears, desires, and efforts to give their best.

Begrijpt u nu waarom ik huil?

January 1969 •Dutch

The work of Leiden professor Bastiaans on dealing with the trauma of war victims attracts the attention of filmmaker Louis van Gasteren. He decides to make a film about the psychotherapeutic treatment with LSD of a former concentration camp prisoner in the clinic of Bastiaans. Patient Joop is arrested in September 1941 and begins a long hellish journey through various camps, until he is liberated by the Russians. When he returns to his wife, he has become a completely different man. Joop suffers from nightmares and is incapable of normal human contact. With two cameras, Van Gasteren records approximately six and a half hours of the first treatment that Joop undergoes with Bastiaans (four more will follow later). Special attention is paid to details: Joop's hands, the sweat on his forehead, a tear running slowly down his cheek. Van Gasteren reduces the recordings to more than an hour.

Makayla's Voice: A Letter to the World

January 2024 •English

A teen with autism unlocks a joyous world of self-expression as she shares her voice for the first time using a letter board.

Helicopter

January 2024 •English

To heal the wounds of his family and spirit, Director Ari Gold goes on an epic two year journey to complete a "Psychomagic assignment" given to him by filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky.