

Following the Sunnyboys’ enigmatic frontman Jeremy Oxley from the band’s origins, breakthrough success and his subsequent 30-year battle with schizophrenia, The Sunnyboy is one man's inspired story of survival and hope. A meditation on a condition often stigmatised and misunderstood, Kaye Harrison’s documentary buries below the surface of Oxley’s public “identity” to explore his own reality and battle to maintain “self”. Secure in a loving relationship with his partner Mary, Oxley slowly emerges from his solitary torment to join the world we all share. The film follows him as he tentatively unpicks his confused thoughts and feelings about the past with his brother Peter. From his struggle with the physical effects of years spent self-medicating to his hopeful contemplation of a married future and a daring return to the stage, The Sunnyboy is the definitive documentary of Jeremy Oxley's journey from the Sunnyboys and back.
Jeremy Oxley
6.8Filmmaker 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.
0.0Voices is an award-winning documentary that features the stark and intimate portraits of three very different individuals and their struggle with severe mental illness in America. The stories of Sharon, Thomas and Aaron illuminate the challenges, realities, and often complex emotions and choices that surround people with psychotic mental illness and those who love them.
Initially airing on HBO's "America Undercover" series, this riveting documentary focuses on three families shattered by the psychiatric disorder of schizophrenia. Subjects "Bob," "Missy" and "Steven" have lived for over a decade with schizophrenia. The film documents the difficult day-to-day existence of both those afflicted with this order and the families searching for answers to their loved ones' suffering. This film also shows the varied and variably successful treatment methods for each of the subjects—one is placed in a group home, one is placed in an institution, and one is cared for at home. The documentary was critically acclaimed for its compassionate treatment of mental illness.
7.0Billy 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.
6.5The first part of this documentary deals with the Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz, Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1949, one of the first surgeons to apply the technique called lobotomy for the treatment of schizophrenia. The second part deals with the everyday life of people with schizophrenia today: behavior and relationships, and treatment for the disease.
Just before Easter 2001, a semi-trailer loaded with 40,000 bottles of beer crashed into the Tweed River on the out skirts of the northern New South Wales town of Murwillumbah (known as "Murbah" to the locals). With salvage crews ordered to clear the crash zone for the busy Easter traffic, the locals undertook their own salvage operation, making it their best Easter ever. Murbah Swamp Beer is a documentary about an event that could only happen in Australia. It captures the spirit of a small, country town as its citizens discover that beer definitely tastes better when it's free.
7.6Hailed as one of the most innovative and intimate documentaries of all time, experience Kurt Cobain like never before in the only ever fully authorized portrait of the famed music icon. Academy Award nominated filmmaker Brett Morgen expertly blends Cobain's personal archive of art, music, never seen before movies, animation and revelatory interviews from his family and closest friends.
2.5Nathan was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Now he's better, before he was much worse. He films himself, his relatives at the hospital, his bipolar best friend, his father, his sister, his mother and his love between 2011 and 2018. For him, everyone is a "loulou", in his own way. It is thanks to them that he finally begins to become a man instead of a madman.
4.0A documentary about Tanjuska who is a 12-year-old White-Russian schoolgirl, with a face like an icon. Two years ago she stopped eating, then talking and finally she stopped growing. The village priest in Estonia has explained to the family that seven devils have made a home inside Tanjuska. These devils are giving her orders and only a daily ceremony can force the devils to leave the girl.
6.9A significant number of American children and teenagers - from all social backgrounds - suffer from mental disorders, schizophrenia, autism and emotional problems, leading them to isolation from society while treating their issues in mental health facilities. But there's no end in sight for those young individuals when they face obstacles and mistreatment in inadequate places under the supervision of careless and inexperienced professionals. The documentary follows some of those public mental institutions and another private center dealing with troubled kids and reveals what's wrong with their procedures, and the irreparable harm they cause in those patients.
0.0A videographer observes a rock band during a continent spanning regional bus tour. The dichotomy of the forever touring musician is slowly deconstructed, then reassembled through frontmen and lifelong friends, Alex & Fergus
6.5In this horrifyingly modern fairytale lurks an online Boogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. The entrance to the internet quickly leads to its darkest basement. How responsible are our children for what they find there?
6.4Jonas Elrod woke up one day with the ability to see and hear angels, demons and ghosts. Filmed over the course of three years, this documentary follows Jonas and his girlfriend as they try to understand the phenomenon.
0.0In 1973, Sweet were the subject of a documentary All That Glitters for BBC Schools series Scene. Being intended for “educational purposes,” the program had to pose a relevant topic for debate among its teenage audience—in this case, “Is the music business really that glamorous?” Over a period of two to three days, Scene followed the band members Brian Connolly (vocals), Steve Priest (bass/coals), Andy Scott (guitar) and Mick Tucker (drums) as they rehearsed for a Top of the Pops appearance (which led to an outcry over Priest’s Nazi outfit) and their (now hailed as “legendary”) Christmas show at London’s Rainbow Theater.
In part of the HBO's America Undercover series, this documentary provides an insider's view of mental illness, and the use of psychotropic drugs to alleviate some of its symptoms. Tracks the odyssey of four psychiatric patients, beginning with their arrival at Massachusetts General Hospital and the affiliated Lindemann Center, revealing their personal struggles and inner strength as they enter the world of psychiatric treatment to seek relief from insanity.
In the late 1990s, some officers at Vancouver Police Department made a documentary film (THROUGH A BLUE LENS) about the everyday lives of six drug addicts in Vancouver's skid row, the Downtown Eastside. TEARS FOR APRIL reintroduces us to these six people; with footage shot over a period of nearly ten years, it continues their biography.
6.5After Dontre Hamilton, a black, unarmed man diagnosed with schizophrenia, was shot 14 times and killed by police in Milwaukee, his family embarks on a quest for answers, justice and reform as the investigation unfolds.
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?
Charts the remarkable rise of Australian basketball, following the real stories of the players and coaches responsible for the sport's ascendancy, and the events that changed Australian basketball forever.
Enter the imaginative world of acclaimed sculptor Rolanda Polonsky, who had been a resident of Netherne Psychiatric Hospital in Coulsdon, Surrey for 26 years when this film was made. One of the positive aspects of her illness, described in the film as a schizophrenia, is that it "tapped a deep source of mystical vision and human feeling" which finds expression in her work.
