New from Field of Vision, Kate Stonehill and Grace Harper’s short film The Family Statement uses never-before-seen messages drawn from a family WhatsApp group to construct a conversation between the billionaire Sackler clan and those afflicted by the United States’s opioid crisis. The Whatsapps appear in text on the screen, set against wide shots of vast landscapes, boarded-up homes, and deserted streets. Signs of once-thriving communities now decimated.
Well-known for their philanthropic efforts, the Sackler family have been less forthright about the ways they’ve benefited from selling the opioid painkiller Oxycontin. In stark contrast, in this film, doctors reflect on their own guilt and complicity in the crisis as they examine their relationships with Big Pharma, seeking to articulate how the current situation came to be. Interviews foreground the anger and pain of patients’ families as they explore the notion of culpability in the context of their loved ones’ addictions.
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The Family Statement brings the notoriously private Sacklers into dialogue with those living the consequences of the opioid epidemic, offering poignant commentary on capitalism, corporate accountability, denial, and pain.
Watch it now on fieldofvision.org.
The Family Statement has played at Sheffield DocFest, DOC NYC, Double Exposure, Hamptons International Film Festival, Doc10 Chicago & IndyShorts.
The film is directed by Kate Stonehill and Grace Harper, and produced by Steven Lake.
Source: Hyperallergic.com