A gripping personal investigation that exposes the tangled web of moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying. Disabled filmmaker Reid Davenport uncovers shocking abuses of power as he amplifies the voices of the disability community and raises the alarm about the "right to die."
SYNOPSIS
LIFE AFTER is a gripping investigative documentary that exposes the tangled web of moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying. Disabled filmmaker Reid Davenport uncovers shocking abuses of power while amplifying the voices of the disability community fighting for justice and dignity in an unfolding matter of life and death.
In 1983, a disabled Californian woman named Elizabeth Bouvia sought the “right to die,” igniting a national debate about autonomy and the value of disabled lives. After years of courtroom battles, Bouvia vanished from public view. Sundance-winner Davenport embarks on a personal investigation to find out what really happened to Bouvia and reveal why her story is disturbingly relevant today.
LIFE AFTER brings together the missing voices of the disability community in the ongoing debate about assisted dying, uncovering chilling stories of disabled people dying prematurely. Davenport exposes the intersection of systemic failures and personal autonomy, challenging the idea that assisted dying always represents a free choice, when it can sometimes be seen as the only option.
Director Statement
LIFE AFTER is an attempt to recontextualize a national news story that was forgotten just as quickly as it broke. Bouvia's life, as I suspected, has much more resonance today than her public saga initially revealed. Her life needs to be remembered in its entirety, with the recovered pieces excavated in this film. Her story offers a provocation: why is it acceptable to give disabled people the means to die, before supporting them in the chance to live?
Supporter Statement
"Profound and unflinching, this documentary engages in philosophical terrain that is treacherous, challenging, and ultimately rich and necessary. Life After looks closely and critically at where progressive values of bodily autonomy and individual choice collide with latent fears of disability and an unequal value of the lives of disabled people. In doing so, Reid untangles an issue at the heart of our moral societal standing."
— Ash Hoyle, Sundance Film Festival
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Reid Davenport
Reid Davenport makes documentaries about disability from an overtly political perspective. His first feature film, I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE, won the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the McBaine Bay Area Documentary Award at San Francisco IFF. It had a national broadcast on POV in 2023. The film has been hailed by critics as “first-person poetry in captivating motion, expressed with a singular, assured artistic voice” and a “must-see.” In 2020, Reid was named to DOC NYC’s “40 Filmmakers Under 40.” His short film, A CEREBRAL GAME, won the Artistic Vision Award at the 2016 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival for “creating a visual landscape that is at once disorienting and nostalgic - and the result is so raw and compelling it's impossible to turn away.”
Along with A CEREBRAL GAME, his short documentaries WHEELCHAIR DIARIES and RAMPED UP are distributed by New Day Films. Reid was a 2017 TED fellow and gave a TED Talk about incorporating his own literal body into his filmmaking. His work has been featured by outlets like NPR, PBS, The Washington Post, MSNBC, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Reid holds an MFA in Documentary Film & Video from Stanford University and a BA in Journalism and Mass Communication from The George Washington University.
Colleen Cassingham is a Producer at Multitude Films focused on politically committed artful nonfiction. Most recently, she produced the IDA Awards-nominated shorts collection QUEER FUTURES (CPH:DOX 2023), Executive Produced by J Wortham. Her past credits include Co-Producer on IT’S ONLY LIFE AFTER ALL (Sundance 2023), and Associate Producer on PRAY AWAY (Tribeca 2020), THROUGH OUR EYES: APART (Provincetown 2020), CALL CENTER BLUES (SXSW 2020), ALWAYS IN SEASON (Sundance 2019), THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED (Tribeca 2018), and LOVE THE SINNER (Tribeca 2017) which were distributed by Netflix, Topic, HBOMax, POV, and Independent Lens. Colleen's directorial debut short FROM DAMASCUS TO CHICAGO was broadcast on POV in 2017 and was an Editor’s Pick at The Atlantic. She is a 2023-2024 Sundance Producing Fellow, selected for her role producing Reid Davenport’s second feature doc LIFE AFTER. She is also a 2023-2024 Impact Partners Producing Fellow and was a VC Sony 2021 Mentor at The Video Consortium, a 2019 Points North Fellow, and a 2017–2018 UnionDocs Collaborative Studio fellow. Outside of Multitude Films, she is independently producing Casey Carter’s Sundance-supported debut feature, TO USE A MOUNTAIN.
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