Boy Interrupted

USA 2008. Director: Dana Perry

 

Every parent’s worst nightmare is, unquestionably, the death of their child — the very event experienced by Dana Perry in 2005 with the suicide of her 15-year-old son Evan. A documentary filmmaker by trade, Dana sought solace by creating a film to try to understand the mind of a boy who asked in his suicide note “only to be forgotten.” In this, her “Mother’s Lament,” Dana takes us back through 15 years of home movies and photographs to paint a portrait of a child who was different — and even obsessed with death — from a very early age; the “darkest of souls,” she calls him. Home movies of Evan at seven show him demonstrating how he might hang himself from his bunk bed. His first suicide attempt, at age 11, landed him in a treatment facility, where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder — an echo of another family tragedy, the suicide of an uncle, years earlier. For Evan, medication and therapy seemed to be helping; as he moved into adolescence, things seem to be going well for the first time in years. The blow, when it comes, is devastating. “Mournful, pained and beautifully put together” (John Anderson, Variety). “Deeply absorbing . . . Boy Interrupted is hard to reckon with, but even harder to shake off” (Scott Foundas, LA Weekly). Colour, 92 mins.

 

Post-screening discussion with Judy Davies, Jude Paltzer and Dr. Jana Davidson.

 

Ms. Davies is a Child & Youth Suicide Clinician with Vancouver Coastal Health and has been working in the realm of crisis and suicide intervention for more than 15 years. With a passion for suicide intervention and the belief that is possible to help keep people alive, she provides suicide consultation and education to community agencies within Vancouver; and numerous First Nation communities.