Voices from the Shadows

‘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.

Your Chance to Live: Psychological Response

The film discusses the emotional aftermath of disasters, emphasizing the importance of expressing feelings and seeking help. It highlights personal experiences of individuals affected by hurricanes and earthquakes, focusing on their feelings of guilt, anxiety, and the need for support. The discussion underscores that sharing experiences can alleviate emotional pain and that professional help should be sought for those struggling to cope with trauma.

What About ME?

Inside the dramatic search for a cure to ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). 17 million people around the world suffer from what ME/CFS has been known as a mystery illness, delegated to the psychological realm, until now. A scientist in the only neuro immune institute in the world may have come up with the answer. An important human drama, plays out on the quest for the truth.

Die heilende Sprache der Pferde

The Wolf Suit

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

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.

How to Use Dianetics

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

Le chemin brut de Lisette et Romain

Zen & the Art of Dying

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.

AA

Alcoholics Anonymous is a community of men and women who share their experience, hope and support with each other so that they can address their common problem and help others to break free from alcohol addiction. The documentary follows the stories of ten people who have been on the verge of alcoholism for almost their entire lives.

Generation A: Portraits of Autism and the Arts

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

We Are Not Done Yet

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.

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.

Autismus - Das rätselhafte Spektrum

What “living on the autism spectrum” means for those affected and their environment. To find out, the camera team accompanied autistic people into their world. The documentary shows the challenges they face in their everyday lives and lets them tell their personal stories. It is accompanied by two renowned autism researchers, Tony Attwood and Professor Ludger Tebartz van Elst, and dispels the clichés that most people have about autistic people. Because autism is very diverse. The documentary takes an exclusive look at the current state of autism research in Professor Jürgen Knoblich's gene laboratory in Vienna.

Flee

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

Self Made

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.

Stammer School

Stammer School follows a cast of struggling stammerers as they enrol in a course that aims to help them finally find their voices. Stammer School features Musharaf Asghar – affectionately known as Mushy – from Educating Yorkshire. He found a place in the hearts of the nation as millions tuned in to watch him learn methods to overcome his crippling stammer and achieve the C grade he needed in his English GCSE. Although Mushy’s stammer has improved, he is often left speechless still. With the help of an intensive programme, led by other stutterers, Stammer School will follow Mushy and others as they attempt to overcome this huge stumbling block in their lives.

The Healing

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.

Begrijpt u nu waarom ik huil?

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.