Film

“Drug-induced, chronic schizoaffective psychosis of the manic type, polytox type, not morphine type”—that is the diagnosis given to the director’s father.

In other words, he goes through the same cycle over and over again. Psychoses tear him away from reality; hospital stays bring him back, followed by depressive shame. During these psychoses, he is unpredictable and openly acts out his violence, even against those around him. To her, however, he is not just a perpetrator whose actions she deeply condemns, but also a person she loves and an artist she admires.

He has captured the world of his psychoses in photographs, paintings, and sculptures. The relationship between daughter and father also finds expression in art: in a collaborative comic book whose pages they take turns filling with drawings. He struggles against himself, against his illness, and against a system.

The multiple Audience Choice Award winner An Illness Like a Poem tells, with warmth, humor, and great visual power, of reversed parent-child roles, the poetry in chaos, and the pervasive nature of an illness.