Films from our festival program
My Word Against Mine (2025)
The documentary delves into the minds of voice hearers who attempt to genuinely listen to their inner voices, hoping that this radically different approach will provide relief. We are introduced to five patients who experience hearing voices and are receiving individual therapy to address their significant challenges. Read more
The Dance Club (2025)
This Swedish drama-comedy takes place at the Care Neuropsychological Assessment Clinic, where psychology student Markus is doing his internship. After silently observing his supervisor’s consultations, he begins to ask questions—both directly to patients and to his supervisor. Read more
Medicating Normal (2020)
“Medicating Normal” follows four people who were harmed by the drugs they thought would help them. This is the story of what can happen when profit-driven medicine meets people in crisis. What began as understandable reactions to trauma or life difficulties gradually developed into long-term psychiatric treatment, marked by multiple diagnoses and increasing use of medication. Read more
Cause of Death: Unknown (2017)
This Norwegian-produced documentary thriller follows filmmaker Anniken Hoel as she investigates the sudden death of her older sister—a journey that unfolds over ten years. Her grief drives Hoel to uncover what she perceives as the cruelty and cynicism of the pharmaceutical industry.
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A Drop of Sunshine (2011)
The story of Reshma Valliappan and her journey of eventual triumph over schizophrenia. Embodying a controversial and contrarian view towards recovery, it proposes that the only treatment that can work is the one wherein the ‘patient’ is encouraged and empowered to become an equal partner in the process of healing. Read more
Inner Fire Healing Community
Video from the 10th Anniversary Celebration 2025
The video opens with Mitzi Montague Bauer, Chair of Inner Fire’s Board, reflecting on the meaning of the organization’s mission, “the power of choice,” through her personal experience. Founder Beatrice Birch then describes Inner Fire as a healing community centered on honoring individual choice, helping people strengthen themselves on a deeper soul and spiritual level. Read more
10 Days In a Madhouse (2015)
Nelly Bly was the pen name of a determined young woman who, in 1887, pushed her way into journalism at a time when the profession was almost entirely dominated by men. Working for the New York World, she took on an assignment few others would dare: going undercover inside a women’s psychiatric institution. Read more
Love and Mercy (2014)
The film portrays the life of Brian Wilson, the brilliant composer and creative force behind the band The Beach Boys. He struggles with emerging psychosis as he attempts to craft his avant-garde pop masterpiece. In the 80s, he’s a broken, confused man under the 24-hour watch of shady therapist, Dr. Eugene Landy.
Read more
CRAZYWISE (2016)
The documentary follows Adam and Ekhaya over several years, two young people in the United States diagnosed with psychosis and schizophrenia. Alongside their stories, the film presents perspectives from other cultures where similar experiences are interpreted not as pathology, but as forms of contact with a spiritual dimension. Read more
The Happy Pill (2017)
This is the story of a young girl with a shattered self-image who lost 10 years of her life. She was hospitalized for depression at just 16. Shortly after being prescribed antidepressants, she began experiencing suicidal thoughts and hearing unfamiliar voices. She was then diagnosed with schizophrenia and treated with neuroleptics, after which she developed hallucinations. Read more
The Pill That Steals Lives (2020)
This documentary recounts Katinka Blackford Newman’s experience with antidepressant treatment that began for insomnia and stress but quickly led to severe psychological side effects, including hallucinations and self-harm. She was hospitalized and placed on multiple medications over the course of a year, during which she became emotionally detached from her children and her life. Read more
Ida Katharine Graver: Meaning, Modernity and Power (2025)
Ida Katharine Graver paints because life depends on it. On the edge of being abandoned to psychiatry as a child – a broken blossom – she thrived instead as a hothouse flower: gathering the shapes and colors of life and giving back to the world the meaning she finds in it. Read more
Edvard Munch in 8 Minutes (2024)
Munch was one of Modernism’s most significant artists. His tenacious experimentation within painting, graphic art, drawing, sculpture, photo and film has given him a unique position in art history. Produced by MUNCH in collaboration with Spindel Film. The film is shown and shared with permission from the Munch Museum. Read more
Art exhibition
Art exhibition slideshow: https://madinnorwayfilmfest.org/mad-in-norway-film-festival-art-show-2026/
Other recommended films (films that we had wanted to include in the program if it was possible)
Traumality: The Link Between Trauma and Mental Health Diagnoses (2026)
This is an exceptional, paradigm-shifting documentary that comprehensively explores trauma’s impact through expert interviews and research-based insights. They praise its transformative reframing from “what’s wrong with you” to “what happened to you,” its powerful critique of psychiatric systems that pathologize trauma responses, and its compassionate approach to understanding mental health. Read more.
What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About TRAUMA
One of the reviews: “So much wisdom, compassion, and humanity (plus a sprinkling of wit) in such a short time – thank you Adam for sharing this – a truly, precious gift to the world! 🙏♥️” Read more
27 NIGHTS (2025)
The film is a dramatization inspired by real events. It tells the story of Martha Hoffmann, an 82-year-old woman who is forcibly admitted to a psychiatric ward after her daughters claim she is unable to take care of herself. They refer to the diagnosis of frontal lobe dementia that was recently made during a 27-day period of involuntary hospitalization and evaluation. Read more
The Year I Healed my Schizophrenia (2024)
“Over the past year, I’ve documented my attempt to use a medical ketogenic diet and other metabolic therapies to manage—and ultimately heal—my schizoaffective disorder. In this film, I share the doubts I carried into this unconventional path, the unexpected relief it brought, and the deeply personal changes I experienced along the way.” Lauren Kennedy West. Read more
Rose (2022)
Inspired by a true story. The Danish film Rose takes place in 1997, where Inger, her sister Ellen and brother-in-law Vagn go by bus to Paris. Inger lives in an institution and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. After saying goodbye to their clingy and overprotective mother, they embark on a bus trip to Paris, Versailles, and Normandy. Read more
Elling (2001)
When his mother, who has sheltered him his entire 40 years, dies, sensitive would-be poet Elling is sent to live in a state institution. There he meets Kjell Bjarne, a gentle giant and woman-obsessed virgin in his 40s. After two years, the men are released and provided with a state-funded apartment and stipend with the hope they will be able to live on their own. Initially, the simple act of going around the corner for groceries is a challenge. Through a friendship born of desperate dependence, Elling and Kjell Bjarne discover that not only can they survive on the outside–they can thrive. But as their courage grows, they find oddball ways to cope with society and strike up friendships in the unlikeliest places. Read more
Force Against Conviction (2001)
Documentary about Arnold Juklerød, the Norwegian man who in the 1970s, due to his political involvement in a school closure, was declared seriously mentally ill and confined to Gaustad Hospital in Oslo. Director: Haakon Sandoy
Read more
Philadelphia Network (1977)
In the sixties and seventies, Ronald D.LAING and his colleagues conducted the most radical experiment ever within the field of alternative psychiatry. A number of Community Houses were set up in different parts of London. Here people who were labeled by conventional psychiatry as “mentally ill” could live together on an equal basis, without medications or treatment in the usual sense. No staff, no “patients”, just sharing the challenges of life together. A film by Bob Foss and H.Å. Gabrielsson. Read more
Mettes Voice (2014)
We follow Mette, a Danish woman, through four years of her life. Mette is now in her 40s, and the documentary is about tapering off medication, uncovering underlying trauma, and various forms of therapy that helped Mette return to a social and active life. The film won first prize for Best Foreign Film at the Mad in America Film Festival in Boston in 2014. Read more
Take These Broken Wings (2008)
Documentary film by director and former psychotherapist Daniel
Mackler. The film shows that people can recover fully from schizophrenia without psychiatric medication. Featuring Joanne Greenberg (bestselling author of “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”). Interviews with Peter Breggin, Robert Whitaker, Bertram Karon, and Catherine Penney. Read more
OPEN DIALOGUE: an alternative Finnish approach to healing psychosis (2011)
Documentary by Daniel Mackler
A group of innovative family therapists converted the area’s traditional mental health system into one that now gets the best statistical results in the world for first-break psychosis. They call their approach Open Dialogue. Read more
Patrick’s Day – Love is Madness (2014)
Patrick is a warm, open 26 year old man with what seem to be mental health issues. Pills and his mother`s protection is seen by everyone as the sole things helping him from being a threat to himself and others. That is, until he falls in love with Karen, who has another opinion. This is a provocative and heartbreaking story about love and intimacy, abuse from a parent and from society, and it is about a repressive medical model. Read more
55 Steps (2018)
55 STEPS is based on the inspiring true story of an outrageous and smart Eleanor Riese (1943-1991), a patient in a psychiatric hospital and her attorney, a patients’ rights lawyer, Colette Hughes. Despite heavy sedation and isolation in a padded cell at a California hospital, Eleanor manages to call a patient advocate and request a lawyer after being forcibly medicated. Read more
The Friendship Bench (2023)
In 2006, Dr. Dixon Chibanda, a psychiatrist in Zimbabwe, was ordered by the government to deal with the severe mental health crisis afflicting the nation. However, there was literally a handful of psychiatrists in the entire country, which meant searching for a solution beyond conventional medicine.
Read more
Learn About Soteria Vermont (2018)
We are given a brief introduction to Pathways Soteria House in Vermont, which offers a safe, supportive community for people experiencing psychosis for the first time. The Greek word soteria means safety, salvation, and deliverence. The place is run as a home where there are no titles, medications, or diagnoses. The goal is to support people to find their own way, as well as to promote a different interpretation and approach to what we refer to as mental health challenges. Read more
Soteria Stories
The film shows interviews with people who have found community, security, and the path back to themselves and others through their stay at Soteria. Read More
Joe Watson’s poem “I’m with her”
Inspired by Eleanor Longdons story. A film by Ian Smith. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC8D7T_sjKA
Bad Things Happen – James and the Disorders
Music-video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdsDPVLuvFM
Do Something (2021)
Poem by Jo Watson, Film by Ian Smith.