Kalina Bertin
2017
Manic chronicles filmmaker Kalina Bertin’s journey to make sense of the mental illness wreaking havoc over her family’s household. Convinced that her father holds a piece to the puzzle, she sets out to find the truth about him. Through a maze of intricately woven interviews, and vivid 8mm archives, she travels back in time, to the seventies, on the exotic Island of Kauai in Hawaii. She meets with Don, Steven, Karen and Margaret, who describe the charismatic man who seduced them and invited them to follow him on his holy mission: to bring together a group of people who he described as being “significant human beings”. Slowly, the idea of past lives is brought into the picture, and they start believing that he is the reincarnation of Christ. But is this man stable? Visual and auditory hallucinations... delusions of grandeur... the signs of mental illness are everywhere. Which brings the filmmaker back to the present, where her sister Felicia and brother François are both experiencing manic episodes. As the film travels from past to present, we can clearly see that the father’s story echoes back to the present struggles of her siblings, whom the viewer learns to love through vulnerable and human sequences highlighting the hardship of living with mental illness. Manic invites the viewer on a compelling and intimate journey through time and through the mind, where past and present collide.
CREDITS
Spirit Award at Brooklyn Film Festival
Don Haig Pay It Forward Prize at Hot Docs
Nominee for Best Documentary Feature at Canadian Screen Awards
Nominee Best Editing at Canadian Screen Awards