Billy

Apr 17, 2024

1h 47m

★ 0.0

Dedicated to victims

Overview

Billy is a film buff who films himself non-stop. During a film shoot, he meets Lawrence Côté-Collins and the two become friends. One night, he assaults her. Years later, in prison for the deaths of two people, Billy is diagnosed with schizophrenia. With the help of the filmmaker, his only remaining relationship apart from his family, his personal archives become an invaluable resource for understanding his illness. A formal deconstruction of schizophrenia through a remarkably open-minded gaze.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

9174-5018 Québec inc.

LC2 Productions

Billy Trailers

Cast

Self

Lawrence Côté-Collins

Self

Billy-Denis Poulin

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.

6.2

Gary Gulman: The Great Depresh

Oct 5, 2019

In his first HBO comedy special, Gary Gulman offers candid reflections on his struggles with depression through stand-up and short documentary interludes. While speaking to issues of mental health, Gulman also offers his observations on a number of topics, including his admiration for Millennial attitudes toward bullying, the intersection of masculinity and sports, and how his mother's voice is always in his head.

6.9

Tarnation

Oct 19, 2003

Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.

7.2

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy

Oct 18, 2018

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy is a feature-length documentary film highlighting the history of the Crownsville State Mental Hospital in Crownsville, MD.

6.1

The Case of Bruno Lüdke

Feb 17, 2021

The incredible story of Bruno Lüdke (1908-44), the alleged worst mass murderer in German criminal history; or actually, a story of forged files and fake news that takes place during the darkest years of the Third Reich, when the principles of criminal justice, subjected to the yoke of a totalitarian system that is beginning to collapse, mean absolutely nothing.

6.0

Crazywise

Jun 6, 2017

Western culture treats mental disorders primarily through biomedical psychiatry, but filmmakers Phil Borges and Kevin Tomlinson reveal a growing movement of professionals and survivors who are forging alternative treatments that focus on recovery and turning mental “illness” into a positive transformative experience.

0.0

Faceless

Oct 5, 2012

Faceless is a documentary film about the workings of an inpatient psychiatry unit, seen through the eyes of both the patients trying to get well and the staff trying to help them.

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0.0

They Heard Voices

Dec 14, 2016

THEY HEARD VOICES is a documentary film exploring the Hearing Voices Movement, chronic psychosis, and the schizophrenia label. The film is a series of wide-ranging interviews with voice hearers, medical historians, anthropologists and psychiatrists from Britain and America, presenting different people’s views. Is schizophrenia hard science or an arbitrary, catch-all term with no real meaning? What does it mean for those experiencing psychosis?

6.8

The Future Tense

Sep 2, 2022

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.

8.0

A Brilliant Madness

May 28, 2002

The life of the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and schizophrenic John Nash — the inspiration for the feature film A Beautiful Mind — is a powerful exploration of how genius and madness can become intertwined.

0.0

What Should We Have Done?

Oct 8, 2023

In 1983, the director’s 24-year-old sister developed symptoms of schizophrenia. Her parents couldn’t accept it—refusing to seek treatment for their sick child, they confined her to their house, to the point of even fixing a padlock on the front door to lock her in. Her younger brother, suspicious of his parents’ actions, began filming the family in an effort to openly question them. A family conflict that lasted over twenty years.

0.0

The Musical Mind: A Portrait in Process

Nov 23, 2023

Sparked by the impending 25th anniversary of the Academy award-winning film Shine, this documentary explores the power of the musical brain. Featuring exclusive, intimate footage of superstar international musicians in their private worlds, it opens an intriguing portal into the musical mind.

10.0

Drunk on Too Much Life

Nov 6, 2021

The filmmakers' 21-year-old daughter journeys from locked-down psych wards and diagnostic labels toward expansive worlds of creativity, connection, and greater meaning. Featuring insights from trauma experts and others, the film challenges the widespread idea that mental illness should be understood purely in biological terms, revealing the myriad ways that madness has meaning beyond brain chemistry.

7.3

Three Identical Strangers

Jun 29, 2018

New York, 1980. Three complete strangers accidentally discover that they're identical triplets, separated at birth. The 19-year-olds' joyous reunion catapults them to international fame, but also unlocks an extraordinary and disturbing secret that goes beyond their own lives – and could transform our understanding of human nature forever.

7.6

Häxan

Sep 18, 1922

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. But the film itself is far from serious-- instead it's a witches' brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.

10.0

Sparni

Dec 9, 2023

It’s the second semester of junior year for Pierce “Sparni” Sparnroft, a gifted jazz vibraphonist studying at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Sparni’s prospects on the vibes were rejuvenated by their new professor, the world-renowned Steve Nelson, and are to be showcased during a student-driven recital in May 2023. But all the while, Sparni must face a crisis within.

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0.0

Executing the Insane: The Case of Scott Panetti

Jan 1, 2007

Scott Panetti was tried for the capital murder of his parents-in-law on September 8, 1992 in Gillespie County, Texas. He was subsequently sentenced to death on September 22, 1995. Panetti has an extensive history of mental illness, including schizophrenia, manic depression, auditory hallucinations and paranoia. Panetti was hospitalized, both voluntarily and involuntarily for mental illness fourteen times in six different hospitals before his arrest for capital murder in 1992. Following his conviction, Panetti’s former wife, and daughter of the victims, Sonja Alvarado, filed a petition stating that Panetti never should have been tried for the crimes as he was suffering from paranoid delusions at the time of the killings.

0.0

Attila

Oct 10, 2023

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.

7.3

Warrendale

Jun 7, 1967

This ground-breaking cinéma-vérité classic documents five weeks in the lives of twelve residents of a home for emotionally disturbed children. It is the first in the form that King later described as actuality drama. All the action is spontaneous and undirected, with neither interviews nor narration. The theme is the outrage of life. The children asked the filmmakers, Why is it that whenever pictures of us are put in the papers, our faces are blacked out. What is so awful about us that we cant be seen? They wanted to be filmed so that they could be seen.

Billy

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Billy Trailers