Finding Normal(2007)
Lindstrom’s powerful documentary takes an unflinching look at the daunting difficulties in overcoming addictions and the dynamic within Portland’s Central City Concern’s recovery mentor program. With a 70% success rate, the program’s strength lies in its ability to promote a strong sense of community and connectedness with peers and mentors, all former addicts committed to helping others as they help themselves. “The film is raw and real, filled with undeniable moments of pain and elation and human personality. It’s impossible to imagine a more honest look at this all-too-common world.”—Shawn Levy, The Oregonian.
Movie: Finding Normal
Finding Normal
HomePage
Overview
Lindstrom’s powerful documentary takes an unflinching look at the daunting difficulties in overcoming addictions and the dynamic within Portland’s Central City Concern’s recovery mentor program. With a 70% success rate, the program’s strength lies in its ability to promote a strong sense of community and connectedness with peers and mentors, all former addicts committed to helping others as they help themselves. “The film is raw and real, filled with undeniable moments of pain and elation and human personality. It’s impossible to imagine a more honest look at this all-too-common world.”—Shawn Levy, The Oregonian.
Release Date
2007-01-01
Average
0
Rating:
0.0 startsTagline
Genres
Languages:
EnglishKeywords
Similar Movies
Voices from the Shadows(en)
‘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.
Confidential File: Barbiturates(en)
A filmed sequence dramatizes the problems addressed in the program: the story of a working mother addicted to barbiturates initially prescribed by her doctor.
Megacities(en)
Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.
Milli Vanilli: From Fame to Shame(en)
The crazy story of two fancy boys, a French and a German, models and dancers, who won a Grammy award in 1990 just by moving their lips: the rise and fall of the Milli Vanilli duo. Playback singers, lies and video clips.
The Business of Recovery(en)
The Business of Recovery examines the untold billions that are being made off of families in crisis. With little regulation or science, addiction treatment has become a cash cow business that continues to grow while deaths pile up.
North by Current(en)
Filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown following the death of his infant niece and the subsequent arrest of his brother-in-law as the culprit. Using the audio-visual approaches of essay film, first-person cinema vérité, staged actions, and decades of home movies, Madsen navigates a town steeped in opioid addiction, economic depression, and religious fervor, while using the act of filmmaking to rebuild familial bonds and reimagine justice. Posing empathy as a tool for creating a more just world, North By Current does not seek to investigate a crime, but creates a relentless portrait of an enduring pastoral family, poised to reframe and reimagine narratives about incarceration, addiction, trans embodiment, and ruralness.
Seattle is Dying(en)
KOMO Anchor Eric Johnson takes an in-depth look at the impact the drug and homelessness problem is having on our city and possible solutions in "Seattle is Dying," a news documentary that aired on KOMO-TV in March, 2019.
DJ Punk: The Photographer Daniel Josefsohn(de)
Nobody captured the atmosphere of 1990s Berlin better than German photographer Daniel Josefsohn, who died in 2016 at the age of 54, leaving his mark in advertising with his irreverent aesthetic and punk sensibility. It was his spontaneous, imperfect images shot for an MTV campaign in 1994 that first made him famous.
Cocaine: History Between the Lines(en)
Cocaine has always gotten a bad rap, and for a reason. It is a drug used by the rich and the poor legally and illegally, Mexican cartels fought over it with Colombia once associated with the brutal cocaine wars, and a source of tension between the American and Mexican borders on the people who are illicitly bringing in cocaine from one side of the border to another and will do anything to do it. So it can be surprising at times to the viewer throughout the course of the documentary special, that it was never always like this.
Foo-Foo Dust(en)
This less-than-feature-length documentary chronicles the endless cycle of addiction perpetrated by a mother and son living in a squalid tenement in San Francisco. 22-year-old Ryan and his mother Stephanie are both drug addicts: Although he'll take whatever comes along, her substance of choice is crack cocaine, and she demands that her son provide her with some. As they navigate their respective addictions, each comes close to overdosing just before they're evicted from their apartment.
The Self-Destruction of Gia(en)
Filmmaker JJ Martin explores Gia Carangi's life through rare home movies and photos, previously unseen interviews with Gia, and contemporary interviews with family, friends, and associates.
Nichts für die Ewigkeit(de)
A sister shares an apartment with her heroin-addicted brother. Over the course of twelve years, she records the constant struggle and the constant losing.
Iboga Nights(en)
Once again, David Graham Scott examines how some addicts use the plant medicine iboga to detox rapidly—and how, sometimes, the conditions in which they detox put them at risk.
Meth Storm(en)
As police and DEA agents battle sophisticated cartels, rural, economically-disadvantaged users and dealers–whose addiction to ICE and lack of job opportunities have landed them in an endless cycle of poverty and incarceration–are caught in the middle.
Be Here to Love Me(en)
Chronicles the fascinating and often turbulent life of Townes Van Zandt.
Am I Irvine Welsh?(en)
A year in the company of Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, as he publishes a new novel, launches a record label, works on two television series and adapts his most famous work Trainspotting into a West End musical.
The Smashing Machine(en)
A stunning and provocative look at Mark Kerr's career from late '99 through the 2000 Pride Grand Prix, fighting with his own personal demons that rival the men he encounters in the ring.
Methadonia(en)
Shot over the course of 18 months in New York City's Lower East Side, METHADONIA sheds light on the inherent flaws of legal methadone treatments for heroin addiction by profiling eight addicts, in various stages of recovery and relapse, who attend the New York Center for Addiction Treatment Services (NYCATS).
Now Something Is Slowly Changing(nl)
A bold documentary in a measured style about the modern-day quest for meaning and personal growth.