Because she picked the wrong door, Anna ends up confessing her marriage problems to a financial adviser named William Faber. Touched by her distress, somewhat excited as well, Faber does not have the courage to tell her that he is not a psychiatrist. From appointment to appointment, a strange ritual is created between them. William is moved and fascinated to hear the secrets no man ever heard.
After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.
Kiichi Nakajima, an elderly foundry owner, is convinced that Japan will be affected by an imminent nuclear war, and resolves to move his family to safety in Brazil. His family decides to have him ruled incompetent and Dr. Harada, a Domestic Court counselor, attempts to arbitrate.
Set in mid-70's, 12-year old Dvir Avni navigates between the equality values of his home-born Kibbutz and the relationship with his undermined mother, whom the Kibbutz members will to denounce.
The story of an imaginative boy who pretends he is the child of a sperm-laden Sicilian tomato upon which his mother accidentally fell.
A black police detective must solve a strange case of a kidnapped boy and deal with a big racial protest.
The true story of Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams, who in the 1970s found that humor is the best medicine, and was willing to do just anything to make his patients laugh—even if it meant risking his own career.
World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.
From an early age, Arnold believes he is an extraterrestrial. Day in, day out, he is busy trying to build a flying machine that will finally take him "home". Protected by his mother Ida and her long-time admirer, the country doctor Emil, he is regarded as a quirky but lovable outsider in his home village.
Young-goon, mentally deranged and frequently electro-charging herself with a transistor radio, has been admitted into a mental institution. Firmly believing herself to be a cyborg, she refuses to consume like a human being. Il-soon is another patient, who catches the eye of Young-goon and soon becomes a close friend. Il-soon is now confronted with the biggest task: to cure Young-goon's mental problem and have her eat real food.
Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.
The true story of Frances Farmer's meteoric rise to fame in Hollywood and the tragic turn her life took when she was blacklisted.
Upon his release from a mental hospital following a nervous breakdown, the directionless Anthony joins his friend Dignan, who seems far less sane than the former. Dignan has hatched a harebrained scheme for an as-yet-unspecified crime spree that somehow involves his former boss, the (supposedly) legendary Mr. Henry.
A tutor recounts a frantic night that culminated in a 16-year old girl's disappearance. Unfolding in front of a video camera direct from a psychiatric ward, Gaby Winters (Jennifer Morrison) recalls a dreadful babysitting job that sent her on a frantic search for a missing teenager out into the heart of a mysterious city. Woven into the story are a multitude of subplots that add up to one chaotic night that Gaby will never forget.
Twenty-two and on the verge of entering high society, college graduate Billy Mitchell finds his plans changing when he falls in love with an inmate with multiple personalities at his father's mental institution.
A very handsome man finds the love of his life, but he suffers an accident and needs to have his face rebuilt by surgery after it is severely disfigured.
Liz, just returned home after a mental breakdown, has to welcome a relative stranger into her home when Caitlin, a young, vivacious woman, claims to be her husband's daughter.
“Nobody Leaves Alive” by André Ristum is shot in beautiful but also distancing black and white. Looking at the Venice line-up, this seems to be a trend this year among the maestros of cinema. The film is inspired by true events that took place in the last century in the “Colonia” hospital in Brazil. Whoever didn’t fit the standards of society, or their family’s perception of it, was locked away, tortured, and killed. There were altogether more than 60,000 victims. Hope dies last, and some of the inmates don’t give up the fight. We’re reminded of film classics such as “One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest” or “Alcatraz”.
Shortly after the beginning of World War 2 a young idealist doctor is employed in a psychiatric hospital, where his notions of proper care for the patients are challenged by staff and the German occupation.
Fresh out of a psychiatric hospital, Pia moves back in with her parents to get her life together. Torn between a new job, lovesickness, psychotropic drugs and social stigmatization, she emerges into a world where everything seems out of control.