Like a Thief in the Night

This is a film about children who thought they were "crazy." Who wanted to die. Who felt fear, anger and hopelessness. Four young people living with mental illness and their loved ones make the courageous decision to open up about their stories. Their voices are complemented by that of the director, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder as an adult and powerfully evokes the initial symptoms, which emerged in her childhood. Racing Thoughts skirts the specialists' debates in favour of a more personal tone, moving away from the alarming vocabulary of diagnoses and allowing viewers to discover the children affected.

How can children accept a parent's death when it is shrouded in silence, evasions and half-truths? The children live with a legacy of grief and guilt, feeling abandoned and always wondering, "Was it my fault?" Filmmaker Lisa Fitzgibbons grew up with the uneasy feeling that things were not as they seemed. Then she finally learned that her father had ended his life. Surprised to discover that she is not alone, she reaches out to other survivors and meets two people who also lost their fathers to suicide at an early age. Robert describes the 30 long years it took to force the truth into the open. Anne-Marie still regrets her refusal as a child to kiss her father goodbye before leaving for school that last morning. We listen to their stories, presented simply and compassionately against a background of poetic images. In speaking of their experiences, buried emotions resurface. Hope is reborn as all three come to terms with their fathers' death - and with their own lives. In French with English subtitles.

In 1948, Paul-Émile Borduas' Refus global manifesto proclaimed the end of the "reign of fear" embodied by the Duplessis regime. Fifty years later, all the history books mention this document which laid the foundations of modern Quebec. Daughter of one of the signatories, filmmaker Manon Barbeau takes a fresh look at this period. She went to meet the sons and daughters of Barbeau, Borduas, Mousseau and Riopelle, "children of Refus global" who, like her, suffered the consequences of their parents' revolutionary gesture. None of them emerged unscathed from a childhood made up of worries and abandonment, but also of a richness that only art can bring. Especially when it appears to us, as it does here, in the light of emotion.