The Bridge is a controversial documentary that shows people jumping to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco - the world's most popular suicide destination. Interviews with the victims' loved ones describe their lives and mental health.
A short form exploration of the very visceral and disorienting world of living with severe anxiety and depression, the world’s biggest health problem.
Jonas Elrod woke up one day with the ability to see and hear angels, demons and ghosts. Filmed over the course of three years, this documentary follows Jonas and his girlfriend as they try to understand the phenomenon.
Filmmaker Paul Gallasch is 30 and still lives at home with his mentally ill mother. When he meets the woman of his dreams, Paul decides that if he's ever going to make a new life of his own, he must first find a cure for his mother's illness.
In part of the HBO's America Undercover series, this documentary provides an insider's view of mental illness, and the use of psychotropic drugs to alleviate some of its symptoms. Tracks the odyssey of four psychiatric patients, beginning with their arrival at Massachusetts General Hospital and the affiliated Lindemann Center, revealing their personal struggles and inner strength as they enter the world of psychiatric treatment to seek relief from insanity.
In early times, evil spirits were thought to possess people and make them act in strange and frightening ways. By the 1800's, the study of this hysteria led some doctors to believe one person could have separately functioning personalities. In this rare research film from the 1920's, a woman has different personalities who believes they are separate people. One is a male that is not comfortable in women's clothes. Another is a small child. The affliction has been known by different names, but recognized for centuries. Today it is called multiple personality disorder. Why have they become tormented and broken into different personalities? What is the childhood pain that lies buried in the unknown depths of their mind? How can they search for the deadly memories that holds the secrets of their paths and the promise of their healing?
Why do we see so many severely mentally ill people on the street off treatment? Delaney has seen her paranoid schizophrenic father in this state and for 10 years hid from him. Unlisted depicts Delaney's journey, now as a doctor, to bring her father back into her life. Can she have a relationship with him that is not solely based on being his care provider, which was her role as a child. After 2 years of reconnecting, things suddenly change when Richard stops his medicine and disappears....and what starts as an emotional tale of reconciliation turns into a frantic race for survival.
War and Peace of Mind explores what war does to the human mind and how both, the individuals and the nation as a whole, survive it psychologically. Finland and WWII, locally known as continuation war, is the backdrop of this documentary.
An unflinching documentary of those dealing with mental illness in the criminal justice system and a profile of families who tragically fell victims to that system.
On the Franco-belgian border, there's a unique place that takes in children with mental and social problems. Day after day, the adults try to understand the enigma that each one of them represents and, without ever imposing anything on them, invent the solutions that will help them to live in peace, case by case. Through their stories, 'Like an Open Sky' reveals their singular vision of the world to us.
Bubu is a poet who has been committed to state institutions for the insane twelve times. He challenges the meaning of hospital-jails, hybrid institutions which sentence the insane to life imprisonment. The poem "The House of the Dead" was written during the filming of the documentary and reveals the forgotten deaths that occur in these judicial asylums. There are three stories in three acts of death. Jaime, Antonio, and Almerindo are anonymous men, considered dangers to society, whose punishment is the tragedy of suicide, the unending cycle of being committed to the asylum, or surviving life imprisonment in the house of the dead. Bubu is the narrator of his own life and also of his own destiny-death in the asylum.
Staged as a series of voiceover sessions, written with gloriously off-balanced precision and dipped in the color green, THE FUTURE TENSE unfolds as a poignant tale of tales, exploring the filmmakers’ own experiences in aging, parenting, mental illness, along with the brutal history that lies submerged beneath Ireland’s heavy, moist earth.
Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.
25 years after the verdict in the Jamie Bulger murder trial, we reveal what the jury, public and press never heard, and what his two killers, Thompson and Venables, said during their time in custody from arrest to release.
Four-time Emmy winner John Kastner was granted unprecedented access to the Brockville facility for 18 months, allowing 46 patients and 75 staff to share their experiences with stunning frankness. The result is two remarkable documentaries: the first, NCR: Not Criminally Responsible, premiered at Hot Docs in the spring of 2013 and follows the story of a violent patient released into the community. The second film, Out of Mind, Out of Sight, returns to the Brockville Mental Health Centre to profile four patients, two men and two women, as they struggle to gain control over their lives so they can return to a society that often fears and demonizes them.
This film recreates the true story of Tom Sukanen, an eccentric Finnish immigrant who homesteaded in Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 1930s. Sukanen spent ten years building and moving overland a huge iron ship that was to carry him back to his native Finland. The ship never reached water.
Marked by childhood trauma, three women from different generations living with an eating disorder try to get back to life.
Filmmaker Stephen Hosier takes a journey with Richard Csanyi, his childhood friend, as he investigates the life and death of his twin brother Attila, who was found dead on a rooftop in 2020.
This film traces the improbable journey of Charley Pride, from his humble beginnings as a sharecropper’s son on a cotton farm in segregated Sledge, Mississippi to his career as a Negro American League baseball player and his meteoric rise as a trailblazing country music superstar. The new documentary reveals how Pride’s love for music led him from the Delta to a larger, grander world.
Short subject documentary by Julien Nitzberg about the legendary "psychobilly" musician and infamous wild man Hasil Adkins. Filming takes place in Adkins' own yard, his shack, and at various concerts. Adkins is notable for helping create an entirely new form of rock/rockabilly/country fusion, which he plays entirely by himself (with a guitar and drums simultaneously).