Films That Portray Illness

Cinema has always used illness to tell stories of great emotional impact. The collective imagination is marked by heartbreaking works, family dramas, and battles for survival that have moved us and made us reflect. These narratives, often focused on resilience, catharsis, and the power of human bonds in the face of tragedy, have become pillars of the genre.

But illness is also a radical lens through which to deconstruct identity, critique society, and explore the extreme boundaries of the human condition. A cinema exists that offers not sentimental, but raw gazes, using human fragility to investigate the abyss. These films transform the body into a battlefield, the mind into a labyrinth, and illness into a shocking form of truth.

This guide is a journey across the entire spectrum. It is a path that unites the great masterpieces that defined the genre with the most audacious independent films. From the chronicles of a slow fade to the psychological prisons created by family, we will discover how illness, on screen, can become a cinematic experience that is as necessary as it is unforgettable.

Part I: Labyrinths of the Mind – Portraits of Psychological Suffering

Cinema that explores psychological suffering often rejects external and sensationalist representation to attempt a much more arduous feat: immersing the viewer in the subjective experience of a fragmenting consciousness. Using the entire arsenal of cinematic language—from sound design to narrative structure—these films transform the camera into a seismograph of the soul, recording the internal tremors that define mental distress.

A clear evolution can be observed in this approach. Pioneering works like those of John Cassavetes and Robert Altman use an almost documentary or surreal style to create an intense and intimate observation of a character’s breakdown; we are close, but still spectators. Later, directors like Lodge Kerrigan in Clean, Shaven push us further, using a subjective soundscape to make us “hear” the protagonist’s auditory hallucinations. Finally, a film like Florian Zeller’s The Father weaponizes the narrative itself, modifying sets and actors so that the viewer’s cognitive experience mirrors its character’s dementia. It is a crucial shift from sympathy to a deeper, more destabilizing empathy, forcing the audience to share, if only for a moment, the chaos of the mind.

Persona (1966)

Elisabet, a successful actress, suddenly falls mute and is entrusted to the care of Alma, a young nurse, in an isolated seaside house. During their time together, Elisabet’s silence forces Alma into a confessional monologue that causes their identities to blur and merge in a disturbing way, questioning the very nature of the self.

Ingmar Bergman does not film an illness, but the disintegration of the very concept of identity. The Jungian “persona,” the social mask we wear, crumbles in Elisabet’s silence, revealing a terrifying void. The film is an investigation into duality, psychological transference, and the violence of the spirit, where the boundary between two individuals dissolves to the point of suggesting they may be contradictory aspects of a single psyche. Elisabet’s illness is an act of radical refusal, a weapon against the falsity of the world that ends up consuming even the seemingly simple soul of Alma.

Images (1972)

Cathryn, a mentally unstable children’s book author, retreats with her husband to an isolated house in Ireland. Here, her perception of reality shatters. She begins to see and interact with her deceased former lovers and a doppelgänger of herself, losing the ability to distinguish between hallucination and reality, with tragic and violent consequences.

Robert Altman constructs a psychological thriller that is also one of the most disorienting portrayals of schizophrenia ever made. Through a deliberately confusing narrative and the presence of doppelgängers, the film erases any boundary between the real and the imaginary, not only for Cathryn but also for the viewer. Images does not just “show” the illness; it traps us inside it. The suspense derives not from an external threat, but from the implosion of the protagonist’s mind, making the film an immersive and terrifying experience in the solitude of madness.

A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

Mabel Longhetti is a loving wife and mother whose eccentricity and increasingly unstable behavior test the patience of her husband Nick and his family. Unable to conform to social expectations, Mabel sinks into a psychological breakdown that leads to her hospitalization, revealing the fragility of a love confronted with misunderstanding and the pressure to conform.

With a raw cinéma vérité style, John Cassavetes and a monumental Gena Rowlands do not diagnose a pathology but stage the desperate and failed attempt at communication of a woman suffocated by her domestic environment. Mabel’s “disorder” is not an abstract clinical condition but the physical manifestation of a soul that finds no space to express itself. The film is a fierce critique of rigid social and gender norms, where “madness” becomes the only, tragic form of authenticity possible.

Clean, Shaven (1993)

Peter Winter, a man with schizophrenia, is released from a psychiatric institution and sets out to find his daughter, who was given up for adoption. Haunted by incessant auditory hallucinations and overwhelming paranoia, his journey into the outside world is a terrifying odyssey. His struggle to reconnect with his daughter clashes with a reality he cannot decipher and the suspicion that he is a child murderer.

Lodge Kerrigan’s masterpiece is a turning point in the cinematic representation of mental illness. Instead of observing schizophrenia from the outside, the film catapults us inside it through a revolutionary use of subjective sound design. The hums, distorted voices, and deafening noises are not an effect but Peter’s perceptual reality. Clean, Shaven thus creates an experience of radical and terrifying empathy, forcing us to live the anxiety and confusion of a besieged mind, making judgment impossible and listening essential.

Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)

Julien is a young schizophrenic living in an extremely dysfunctional family, dominated by an authoritarian and bizarre father. He works at a school for the blind and tries to make sense of his chaotic inner world of voices and visions. His fragmented life, between moments of tenderness with his pregnant sister and violent clashes with his father, hurtles toward an inevitable tragedy.

Harmony Korine, adhering to the principles of the Dogme 95 manifesto, adopts a grainy, ungrammatical, and deliberately raw visual style that does not just describe schizophrenia but embodies it. The fragmented narrative structure, low-definition images, and almost documentary-like performances reflect Julien’s perceptual chaos. The film thus becomes a radical experiment in which aesthetics are not a stylistic choice but the direct emanation of a psychological state, blurring the line between cinema and the phenomenology of illness.

Melancholia (2011)

The film is divided into two parts, focusing on two sisters. The first, “Justine,” follows the catastrophic wedding reception of a woman sinking into a severe depression. The second, “Claire,” sees the two sisters face the end of the world, threatened by a collision with a rogue planet called Melancholia. Paradoxically, as the world descends into panic, Justine finds a strange calm and lucidity.

Lars von Trier uses the apocalypse as a grand and cosmic metaphor for a depressive episode. Justine’s illness is not an obstacle but a lens that allows her to see reality without the illusions that sustain “healthy” people. Her calm in the face of total annihilation is not nihilism but the lucid acceptance of a truth that her depression had already revealed to her: everything is empty. Melancholia is a visually sumptuous work that subverts the disaster genre to explore the desolation and strange strength that can be found in the depths of the psyche.

Take Shelter (2011)

Curtis, a construction worker in Ohio with a wife and a deaf daughter, begins to have terrifying dreams and visions of an apocalyptic storm. Unsure whether they are real premonitions or the first symptoms of the paranoid schizophrenia that afflicted his mother, Curtis becomes obsessed with building a storm shelter, risking his job, his marriage, and his own sanity.

Jeff Nichols‘ film is a masterpiece of ambiguity that transforms potential mental illness into a powerful allegory of contemporary anxiety. The viewer is placed in the same position as Curtis: we do not know whether to trust his perception or label it as madness. This unresolved tension makes Take Shelter an incredibly powerful exploration of fear, masculine responsibility, and the terror of not being able to protect one’s family from invisible threats, be they psychological, economic, or environmental.

The Father (2020)

Anthony, an elderly and proud man, refuses help from his daughter Anne despite his memory beginning to falter. As his mind deteriorates, his perception of reality becomes an inextricable labyrinth: familiar faces become strangers, the layout of his apartment changes inexplicably, and time loses all linearity, dragging the viewer into his same, heartbreaking confusion.

Florian Zeller accomplishes a brilliant cinematic operation: he does not tell the story of dementia, he makes you live it. The film’s non-linear structure, with actors changing roles and sets subtly modifying, is not a stylistic flourish but the formal embodiment of the disease. The viewer is forced to share Anthony’s disorientation and frustration, experiencing firsthand the loss of all certainty. The Father is an immersive and devastating experience that redefines how cinema can represent the collapse of the mind.

Part II: The Rebellious Flesh – The Body as a Battlefield

Body horror transcends simple shock to become a visceral and powerful language. Here, the grotesque transformation of the body is not an end in itself but serves to articulate complex themes such as trauma, repressed desire, social control, and the terrifying dissolution of the self. The flesh becomes a text on which the deepest fears and rebellions are written.

In particular, a significant trend emerges that uses body horror to explore trauma and female agency. While directors like David Cronenberg or David Lynch use bodily mutation to investigate male anxieties related to technology and procreation, films with female protagonists often reverse this perspective. The famous subway scene in Possession is the physical manifestation of marital trauma. The pica in Swallow is a desperate act to reclaim bodily autonomy in a patriarchal prison. Julia Ducournau’s films, Raw and Titane, explicitly link the mutation of the body to female sexual awakening and a violent rejection of social norms. In this cinema, horror is not an external threat to be defeated but an internal, complex, and sometimes even emancipatory force that arises from oppression. The “monstrous feminine” is thus reclaimed and transformed into a form of radical expression.

Eraserhead (1977)

Henry Spencer lives in a desolate industrial landscape. After a surreal dinner with his girlfriend Mary X and her family, he discovers he has become the father of a monstrous, premature creature. Abandoned by Mary, Henry must care for the sick, screaming “baby,” sinking into a nightmare of grotesque visions and oppressive anxieties.

David Lynch’s debut masterpiece is a total immersion into psychological horror, where the industrial decay of the external world mirrors the protagonist’s internal collapse. The illness is not diagnosed but pervasive: it is the illness of paternal anxiety, the terror of sexuality and responsibility. The grotesque “baby” is the physical manifestation of every fear related to the body, procreation, and the unknown, transforming the film into a body horror allegory about the difficulty of becoming an adult in a hostile and incomprehensible world.

Possession (1981)

Mark, an international spy, returns home to West Berlin, divided by the Wall, to find that his wife Anna wants to leave him. Her request for a divorce triggers an escalation of violence, hysteria, and paranoia. As Mark investigates Anna’s secret life, he discovers that her lover is not human, but a tentacled creature she nurtures and cares for in an isolated apartment.

Andrzej Żuławski’s film is the definitive representation of the psychological disintegration of a marriage through the language of body horror. Isabelle Adjani’s celebrated, harrowing performance in the subway is not just a nervous breakdown but a true metamorphosis. Anna’s illness is trauma made flesh; her relationship with the monstrous creature is the physical manifestation of a pain and alienation so profound they can no longer be contained within the human body. Possession is an extreme and unforgettable experience.

Dead Ringers (1988)

Beverly and Elliot Mantle are identical twin gynecologists of great success who share everything: their clinic, their apartment, and even their women. When Beverly falls in love with an actress, their symbiotic bond begins to crack. Their descent into drug addiction and madness manifests through an obsession with “mutant” female anatomy and the creation of disturbing surgical instruments.

David Cronenberg, master of body horror, directs a cold, clinical, and deeply disturbing work on co-dependency and fragmented identity. The illness here is psychological but is expressed through the body, or rather, through the obsession with the bodies of others. The Mantle twins’ madness is not abstract but materializes in their surgical instruments for “mutant women,” objects that fuse metal and flesh, gynecology and torture. Dead Ringers explores the terror of separation and the pathological fusion of identities, where the female body becomes the battlefield of their psychosis.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

A “metal fetishist” implants a steel rod into his thigh. Shortly after, he is hit by a salaryman and his girlfriend. From that moment, the employee’s body begins to undergo a grotesque transformation, with pieces of metal sprouting from his skin. His metamorphosis into a biomechanical monster will lead him to an apocalyptic confrontation with the fetishist, who has also been transformed.

Shinya Tsukamoto’s cyberpunk cult classic is a sensory assault in black and white that represents the ultimate body horror allegory on the dehumanization of post-industrial urban life. The illness is the fusion of flesh and machine, a technological infection that reflects a repressed sexual fetishism and the violence of the metropolis. With its frantic, almost industrial music video aesthetic, Tetsuo is a feverish nightmare that explores the terror and ecstasy of losing the human body, transformed into a weapon of rusted metal and distorted desire.

Raw (Grave) (2016)

Justine, a young vegetarian raised in a family of veterinarians, starts veterinary school where her older sister also studies. During a brutal hazing ritual, she is forced to eat a raw rabbit kidney. This event awakens in her an uncontrollable and ravenous craving for meat, which soon turns into a desire for human flesh, leading her to discover a dark and primordial side of herself.

Julia Ducournau uses cannibalism as a shocking but incredibly powerful metaphor for sexual awakening and the discovery of one’s own identity. Justine’s “illness” is an atavistic hunger, a desire that society and her family have repressed. The body horror is not only disgusting but also strangely liberating, representing a young woman’s struggle to accept her animal nature and her impulses. Raw is a visceral and intelligent coming-of-age story that explores sexuality, heredity, and the beast that hides beneath the surface of civilization.

Swallow (2019)

Hunter seems to have a perfect life: a successful husband, a magnificent house, and a pregnancy on the way. However, she feels trapped and invisible in a suffocating marriage. She develops pica, a disorder that compels her to ingest non-edible objects. What begins with a marble turns into an obsession with increasingly dangerous objects, a secret act of rebellion that gives her a sense of control.

Carlo Mirabella-Davis analyzes the disorder of pica not as a simple pathology but as a radical and self-destructive act of reclaiming one’s own body. In a world where she has no agency, swallowing objects becomes for Hunter the only way to exercise control, to possess something that is uniquely hers. The film is a sharp critique of a patriarchal environment that treats women as decorative objects, transforming an act of self-harm into a desperate and touching search for freedom.

Titane (2021)

After a childhood car accident that left her with a titanium plate in her head, Alexia has become a dancer who performs at car shows and has a sexual attraction to cars. After a series of murders, she is forced to flee and assumes the identity of a boy who disappeared years ago. She is taken in by Vincent, the boy’s father, a lonely and tormented firefighter, with whom she forms a bond as strange as it is profound.

Winner of the Palme d’Or, Julia Ducournau’s film is a radical statement on gender fluidity, trauma, and the possibility of creating a family outside of any blood ties. Body horror is taken to the extreme: Alexia becomes pregnant by a car, her body deforms, her identity shatters and reassembles. Illness and mutation here become tools to deconstruct and ultimately transcend the limits of flesh, gender, and the human, in a bold, violent, and surprisingly tender work.

Part III: The Slow Fade – Chronicles of Physical Illness and the End of Life

This section focuses on the quiet and often brutal reality of physical decline. Independent cinema, particularly from Europe, is distinguished by its ability to address the existential weight of chronic illness, disability, and the process of dying without resorting to sentimentality. These films do not seek easy tears but pose profound questions about love, dignity, and the very definition of a meaningful life.

Unlike mainstream cinema, which often uses terminal illness as a pretext for a tear-jerking melodrama, these works adopt a philosophical, almost clinical gaze. Michael Haneke’s camera in Amour is an impassive observer of the daily horrors of caregiving. Julian Schnabel’s film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is a formalist triumph that traps us in the protagonist’s paralyzed body. Alejandro Amenábar’s film, The Sea Inside, is a rigorous ethical debate on the right to die. For these directors, illness is not a narrative device to generate emotion but a crucible for existential inquiry. By stripping the narrative of any melodramatic trappings, they force the viewer to confront uncomfortable truths about autonomy, the nature of love in the face of total dependence, and the complex social and ethical implications of mortality.

Safe (1995)

Carol White, a housewife in the San Fernando Valley, leads an affluent but emotionally sterile life. Suddenly, she begins to suffer from a mysterious debilitating illness: she develops extreme allergic reactions to almost everything around her. Doctors find no physical cause, leading her to believe she suffers from an “environmental illness” and to seek refuge in an isolated New Age community in the desert.

Todd Haynes‘ masterpiece is a horror of the soul, where the threat is not a monster but the air one breathes. Carol’s illness, invisible and incomprehensible, becomes a powerful metaphor for the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, but also a fierce critique of the alienating emptiness of suburban existence. Her body rebels against a toxic environment, both chemically and spiritually. Safe is a profoundly unsettling film that explores isolation, paranoia, and the desperate search for a “safe” place in a world that poisons us.

The Barbarian Invasions (Les Invasions barbares) (2003)

Rémy, a cynical and womanizing history professor, is dying of cancer in an overcrowded and inefficient hospital. His son Sébastien, a wealthy businessman with whom he has a conflicted relationship, returns from London to assist him. Using his money, Sébastien manages to improve his father’s conditions and reunites Rémy’s old friends for a final, bittersweet farewell filled with debates, memories, and confessions.

Denys Arcand uses a man’s final days to stage a witty, touching, and deeply philosophical debate on history, ideology, friendship, and the meaning of a life well-lived in the face of mortality. The illness is not the center of the film but the catalyst that allows for reflection on the failure of the great utopias of the 20th century and the triumph of the “barbarian invasions” of materialism. It is a choral work that celebrates the importance of human bonds as the last bastion against the chaos of history and the inevitability of the end.

The Sea Inside (Mare dentro) (2004)

The film tells the true story of Ramón Sampedro, a man who became a quadriplegic after an accident in his youth. For nearly thirty years, he fights a legal battle to obtain the right to end his life with dignity. During his struggle, his life is touched by two women: Julia, the lawyer who takes up his cause, and Rosa, a local woman who tries to convince him that life is still worth living.

Alejandro Amenábar’s film is a powerful and moving plea for the right to die with dignity. Ramón’s disability is not presented as a tragedy in itself but as a condition that raises profound questions about freedom, love, and the definition of a life worth living. Far from being a gloomy film, The Sea Inside is full of humor, poetry, and human warmth, and Javier Bardem’s extraordinary performance forces us to confront one of the most complex ethical questions of our time.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) (2007)

Jean-Dominique Bauby, the charismatic editor of “Elle” magazine, suffers a devastating stroke that leaves him completely paralyzed, afflicted with “locked-in syndrome.” The only part of his body he can move is his left eyelid. Through blinking, he learns to communicate and manages to dictate an entire memoir, freeing his mind, the “butterfly,” from his body, the “diving bell.

Julian Schnabel achieves an extraordinary cinematic feat, translating the experience of “locked-in syndrome” into images. Much of the film is shot from Bauby’s point of view, with blurred vision and an inner monologue that completely immerse us in his prison of flesh. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly transforms a story of extreme physical limitation into a hymn to the power of memory, imagination, and the human spirit, demonstrating that even when the body is immobile, the mind can fly free.

Amour (2012)

Georges and Anne are a cultured couple in their eighties, retired music teachers, whose quiet life is shattered when Anne suffers a stroke that leaves her paralyzed on one side of her body. Georges decides to care for her at home, as promised, but Anne’s progressive and inexorable physical and mental deterioration puts their love to the test, forcing him to face the most difficult responsibility of his life.

Michael Haneke’s masterpiece, winner of the Palme d’Or, is a brutally honest and unsentimental portrait of aging and illness within a long-term marriage. With his clinical and impassive gaze, Haneke shows us the heartbreaking routine of caregiving, the loss of dignity, and the loneliness of suffering. Amour explores love not as a romantic emotion but as an act of profound and, ultimately, devastating responsibility, posing a terrible question: how far can love go to end the suffering of another?

It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012)

Bill is a stick-figure man suffering from an unspecified neurological disorder that causes memory loss and surreal visions. Through a philosophical narration and a montage that mixes animation, photography, and collage, the film explores his struggle to make sense of his fragmented life, his bizarre family history, and his impending mortality, finding unexpected beauty in the details of existence.

Don Hertzfeldt’s experimental work is a miracle of animation and storytelling. Using a seemingly simple form, the film constructs an incredibly touching and profound meditation on memory, identity, and mortality in the face of a degenerative disease. The combination of black humor, existential pathos, and visual innovation creates a unique experience that celebrates the fragility of life and the beauty that can be found even in the moment of its dissolution.

Part IV: Legacy and Imprisonment – Familial Trauma and the Social Wound

In this final section, we examine films in which illness is not an isolated phenomenon but the symptom or consequence of a dysfunctional environment. These works explore how the psychological prisons built by families, the trauma of oppressive social systems, and the cyclical nature of addiction can create and perpetuate suffering.

These films radically challenge the idea of illness as a purely individual failure, proposing instead a social diagnosis. The environment itself becomes the pathogen. In Dogtooth, the children’s “illness”—a total disconnection from reality—is literally manufactured by the parents. In Crumb, the mental disorder that afflicts the brothers is deeply rooted in a traumatic and abusive family dynamic. In Krisha, the family reunion becomes the detonator that triggers a relapse. In 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the physical and psychological trauma of illegal abortion is a direct consequence of a sick and oppressive political regime. The sick individual thus becomes the canary in the coal mine, whose suffering reflects a much larger collective malaise.

An Angel at My Table (1990)

Based on the autobiography of New Zealand writer Janet Frame, the film traces her life from a difficult childhood to her youth, during which her shyness and sensitivity are misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. This error condemns her to eight years in psychiatric hospitals and hundreds of electroshock treatments, until her literary talent literally saves her life.

Jane Campion’s masterpiece is a powerful critique of a medical and social system that pathologizes creativity and female nonconformity. Janet Frame’s “illness” is not an intrinsic condition but a label imposed by a world incapable of understanding her genius and her different perception of reality. The film celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the redemptive power of art in the face of an institution that seeks to normalize and silence difference.

Crumb (1994)

This documentary explores the life and art of Robert Crumb, a legendary underground cartoonist, and his family. Through interviews with Robert and his two brothers, Charles and Maxon, the film reveals a family history marked by abuse, trauma, and severe mental disorders. Crumb’s obsessive and controversial work is presented as the direct result of this dysfunctional legacy.

Terry Zwigoff’s documentary is a heartbreaking portrait of familial mental illness. It does not just explore Robert Crumb’s artistic genius but contextualizes it within a pathological family dynamic that produced both his transgressive art and the tragic conditions of his brothers. The film powerfully demonstrates how trauma is transmitted from generation to generation, suggesting that Robert’s art is not just an escape but also the only possible form of survival in a toxic environment.

Breaking the Waves (1996)

In a rigid Calvinist community on the Scottish coast, the young and naive Bess marries Jan, an oil rig worker. When Jan is paralyzed in an accident, he convinces her that he can be healed if she has sexual relations with other men and tells him about them. Bess embarks on a path of self-destruction, believing her sacrifice is an act of faith and love willed by God.

Bess’s psychological state is the direct product of a repressive and patriarchal religious community. Her “dialogues with God” and her self-destructive acts of faith can be interpreted as a desperate response to psychological trauma and a suffocating dogma. Lars von Trier creates a spiritual melodrama that explores the boundaries between faith, madness, and love, where the protagonist’s “illness” is an extreme form of devotion born in an environment that offers her no other tools to understand pain.

Antichrist (2009)

After the tragic death of their only child, a couple retreats to an isolated cabin in the woods, “Eden,” in an attempt to overcome their grief. He, a therapist, tries to cure his wife with rationality, but their mourning turns into a psychological nightmare. The nature around them becomes hostile and threatening, and the woman sinks into a violent and primordial madness.

Lars von Trier stages a descent into hell that is an extreme allegory of the psychological devastation of grief and depression. The illness here is not only human but cosmic: nature itself is presented as “Satan’s church,” a hostile reflection of the characters’ inner torment. The film is a brutal and controversial work that uses body horror and mythological symbolism to explore the chaos, pain, and despair that follow an unbearable loss.

Dogtooth (Kynodontas) (2009)

A father and mother keep their three teenage children completely isolated from the outside world, confined to their villa with a garden. The children have never passed the gate of their home, and their knowledge of reality has been completely manipulated by their parents, who have redefined the meaning of words. Their gilded cage begins to show its first cracks when the father introduces a woman from the outside to satisfy his son’s sexual needs.

Yorgos Lanthimos’s chilling and surreal film is a powerful allegory of authoritarian systems, whether familial or political. The children’s “illness”—a total ignorance and a distorted perception of reality—is not a natural condition but a product deliberately manufactured through the control of language and knowledge. Dogtooth demonstrates how a toxic and totalitarian environment can create its own pathology, transforming innocence into a form of mental imprisonment.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)

In communist Romania in 1987, where abortion is illegal, university student Găbița is pregnant and wants to terminate the pregnancy. Her friend and roommate, Otilia, helps her arrange a meeting with a clandestine abortionist in a shabby hotel room. What follows is a terrifying and humiliating odyssey that will test their friendship and force them to face the brutal consequences of an oppressive system.

Cristian Mungiu frames illegal abortion not as a simple medical procedure but as the symptom of a sick society. The physical and psychological trauma suffered by the two women is not a private drama but the direct consequence of a political regime that controls and denies the female body. The illness, in this case, is the system itself: a totalitarian power that infects human relationships, turning acts of necessity into experiences of terror and degradation.

Mommy (2014)

Diane, an exuberant widow, decides to take her 15-year-old son Steve, who has a violent attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), out of a rehabilitation center. Their relationship is an explosive seesaw of intense love and fierce clashes. The arrival of Kyla, a shy and stuttering neighbor, seems to bring a fragile balance to their chaotic household, offering a hope of normality.

With its kinetic style, a 1:1 video format that opens up only in moments of liberation, and an overwhelming pop soundtrack, Xavier Dolan explores how Steve’s disorder is constantly amplified and shaped by their socioeconomic difficulties and their co-dependent love. The illness is not a separate entity but is inextricably intertwined with the social context and family dynamics. Mommy is a vibrant and heartbreaking portrait of a mother’s love that is, at the same time, redemptive and destructive.

Krisha (2015)

Krisha, a woman in her sixties, returns home for Thanksgiving after years of absence, determined to prove to her family that she has changed and overcome her alcohol addiction. Despite her efforts to prepare dinner and reconnect with her loved ones, the pressure of expectations and the weight of past traumas slowly but surely push her toward a catastrophic relapse.

Trey Edward Shults’s film is an anxious and claustrophobic immersion into the mind of a woman in recovery. Using a feverish camera and an oppressive sound design, the film transforms the family reunion into a psychological thriller. The family environment, instead of being a place of support, becomes a crucible of unresolved traumas and unbearable pressures, demonstrating how the family itself can be the most powerful trigger for the disease of addiction.