When the filmmaker Michel Negroponte (Jupiter's Wife) received an e-mail from a woman who thought she might be a promising subject for a documentary, a process of collaboration began that would result in one of the most revealing self-portraits of living with mental illness ever made.
“Michelle Maren, this movie's titular subject and eventual
co-director of the movie, has lived enough lives to fill several movies:
she's been a professional actress, go-go dancer, nightclub performer
and porn star. But she also suffers from borderline personality
disorder, eating disorders, clinical depression, childhood trauma and a
daily struggle just to get by. By handing her the camera, Negroponte
effectively empowers Maren to tell her own story - or stories - and what
emerges is as compelling and unfiltered an immersion into a complicated
mind as any you have ever seen.”
— Geoff Pevere, Program Director, Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival
“A fascinating, sometimes harrowing journey into an unusual woman's psyche. Once again, Negroponte tests the
limits of where documentary can go, what it can reveal about the inner lives of others - and by extension, of ourselves.”
— Filmmaker Ross McElwee, Sherman's March
“Exposure therapy and cinema collide in one of the most intense documentaries you'll ever see.”
— Filmmaker Nina Davenport, Parallel Lines
“An intense, challenging and supremely artful documentary that will haunt you long after the final frame.”
— Filmmaker Doug Block, 51 Birch Street
SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDSTaiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival, 2017
Rendezvous with Madness, Toronto, Canada, 2015
DOCNYC, NYC, 2015