Taking Care

Five million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease and dementia—many of them alone in nursing homes. A man with a simple idea discovers that songs embedded deep in memory can ease pain and awaken these fading minds. Joy and life are resuscitated, and our cultural fears over aging are confronted.

Lou Colpé has been filming her grandparents since she was 15. In the process of this intense relationship, she notices some disconcerting signs in her grandmother: Alzheimer’s is slowing her down. A new film begins, a tougher one: the story of a couple that must face a tremendous challenge. Struggling against the tide of oblivion, the task of filmmaking becomes the ultimate act of resistance. Trying to retain the last images of her grandparents, an intimate conversation begins and echoes through the songs that play on the radio, conjuring lost stories and memories.

Every weekend for six years, Jessica takes a bus from NYC, where she lives and works as a set decorator, to Boston, her hometown, where she cares for her dad, Aloysius, who is 87 and has advanced Alzheimer's disease.

Pop chronicles the journey of three generations of Meyerowitz men on a road trip from Florida to the Bronx, in exploration of their familial roots. Joel’s father, Hy, is battling Alzheimer’s disease and so they embark on a “quest to see if, along the way, the adventures and experiences we would have could stimulate his now rapidly failing memory.” The film directed and produced by our Joel Meyerowitz. It is touching, funny, poignant, and beautifully captures the strength of intimacy between fathers and sons.

This documentary profiles the life and career of Pat Summitt, the NCAA's winningest basketball coach, who resigned from her post at the University of Tennessee in 2012 due to early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

A documentary film detailing Glen Campbell's final tour and his struggle with Alzheimer's disease.

When a mutant gene causing Alzheimer’s is discovered in the Jennings family, it leads scientists on a journey to develop a cure and leaves family members with a terrible dilemma.

Vivere

In a village in Thailand, Pomm works in a care center for Europeans with Alzheimer's. While she is separated from her children, she helps Elisabeth during the final stages of her life, as Maya, a new patient, is on her way from Switzerland.

A poignant, sometimes sad, sometimes painful, sometimes humorous, often absurd story of a multiple journey: the journey of loss as the director’s mother Aida struggled with losing herself to Alzheimer’s disease, but finding solace in her repeated “returning” to the Yafa and Palestine of her youth; the journey of the loss of a parent; and the ultimate return journey back to Yafa where Aida would finally find rest and be herself once more.

El pisto

An immersive documentary about four nurses working in retirement houses in Alzheimer units. Near to Claire, Luca, Antoinette and Lika, we discover how the nurses work, how the care is possible, with patience, ability, intelligence, tenderness and love.

In a quiet village in southern China, Fang Xiuying is sixty-seven years old. Having suffered from Alzheimer's for several years, with advanced symptoms and ineffective treatment, she was sent back home. Now, bedridden, she is surrounded by her relatives and neighbors, as they witness and accompany her through her last days.

Australian artist Leon Pericles faces his greatest challenge: holding an exhibition of his life's works while facing the mental decline of his wife and collaborator Moira, as Alzheimer's disease turns their world upside down.

In October 2007, Pasqual Maragall was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Once past the initial blow, he and his family embarked on a crusade against the disease. From the very first step, this film has grown into an extraordinary testament. With intelligence, sincerity and an infectious spirit, Maragall allows a portrait to be painted of not only himself, but also his family and his doctors, in order to leave behind a lasting document of his personal fight.

Augusto and Paulina have been together for 25 years. Eight years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Both fear the day he no longer recognizes her.

With this inventive portrait, director Kirsten Johnson seeks a way to keep her 86-year-old father alive forever. Utilizing moviemaking magic and her family’s dark humor, she celebrates Dr. Dick Johnson’s last years by staging fantasies of death and beyond. Together, dad and daughter confront the great inevitability awaiting us all.

Ticketyboo: a Secret in Plain Sight is an artistic feature documentary exploring the deeply personal struggle of staying connected to a loved one with dementia.

Norm is a love story pure and simple. But there is nothing simple about it. A loving sister decides to take her older brother with Down syndrome into her home to provide the care and the sense of family she feels he has been denied since childhood. Like many aging adults living with Down syndrome, he begins to experience the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Her greatest fears have become a reality, "What if she can't keep him at home forever?"

After 50 years in theatre, film and television, Carme Elias is diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. Together with Claudia Pinto, a director and friend, they decide to record her last conscious voyage. The characters played by Carme accompany this difficult period, while the borders between fiction and reality disappear. While You're Still You is a constant game of mirrors, a pact of love and friendship.