DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM | 107’ | CANADA | 2024
DIRECTOR: Lawrence CÔTÉ-COLLINS
PREMIERE: Valencia
SYNOPSIS
Filmmaker Lawrence Côté-Collins finds her attacker in jail. She wants to understand, forgive and support a suffering man. Billy is schizophrenic, and his worst attack left two people dead. Their epistolary prison friendship reveals the full truth about this undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. Together, they tell their stories and reconstruct themselves through intimate correspondence and unseen video archives.
FESTIVALS :
- Visions du Reel 2024
- Front Doc 2024
- Memorimage Reus 2024
- RIDM 2024
- Leeds IFF 2024
- DocPoint Helsinki 2024
BIO DIRECTOR
Lawrence is a non-conformist and multifaceted filmmaker. Punk, queer, bold, and unfiltered, her work explores excess, anguish, and social issues with humor and transparency. She has directed and written numerous documentary and reality TV series, while also experimenting with various film genres worldwide. Through Kino, she has created over 40 short films, many of which have been awarded at international festivals.
Her first feature film, ÉCARTÉE (2016), won the “Prix du public Bronze” at Fantasia and received two nominations at the Québec Cinema Gala. Her second film, BUNGALOW, was awarded at multiple festivals, including the Festival du Film Francophone d’Angoulême. In BILLY, a hard-hitting documentary, she spent seven years helping a schizophrenic man in prison. Authenticity, empathy, and creative freedom define her art.