Inside: You can’t be alone. Recently, the MICF winners were closed and announced. Best documentary was the Norwegian film “Because we are men” about a male choir, whose participant announces a serious illness. It is impossible not to tell about another picture-participant of the competition - "Inside Person" directed by Olga Lvova, who, along with the main character Karen, attended the show.
The Russian-American film tells the stories of people suffering from dissociative personality disorder. If we talk without all this ornateness, several, sometimes completely different, personalities are combined in one person. When these personalities come out, the voice and habits of the “main” body can change. Karen, a practicing psychiatrist, immediately appears before the audience; she helps many people with DID. The doctor introduces us to the patient and each of her personalities: “the one who jumps on the trampoline”, “the one who draws”, “the one who sings” and others that I will not remember. One of them flirtatiously admits that she is 8 years old, although the girl herself is 28. An unexpected twist begins along the way: Karen herself suffers from DID. After a working day, a qualified psychiatrist lays stones safely hidden on the floor of the house, sits next to them and plays like dolls, and at the same time voices “toys” in a rather squeaky voice. Now one person complains that she is not allowed to drive because of (apparently unsuccessful) accident on the track, and the other is afraid of allegedly crawling and biting ants.
"Original." Karen admits that such a disease arises from a stressful situation, namely, after violence. There are possible variations on the topic: it is either physical, for example, sexual or psychological violence. This is how self-defense manifests itself: people unconsciously hide the victim-personality in a god-forgotten corner of consciousness, and other characters already appear in place. Karen and her patients hide and do not tell what situations they are in. Only those other personalities or close people heroines tell the viewer what really happened. Karen herself, as her partner (yes, the film slightly touches on the LGBT issue), was bullied by her mother, and when she died, the girl was madly happy with such a “gift” on her birthday. The mother of one of the patients regrets that she did not choose a nanny for her daughter more carefully; someone recalls the assault with the use of force.
The film so impressed impressionable viewers that after 20 minutes, someone would get up and leave with the words: “What the hell is this?” Yes, it is really difficult to believe in changing personalities, especially for people who do not know the pain after experiencing violence (tears rolled down my cheeks, and my heart did not cease to shrink with pain). Director Olga Lviva accidentally learned about this disease and was so amazed that at least 2.5 years of her life devoted to the analysis of the causes of DID and ways to overcome: she attended conferences, met with psychiatrists and so met the main character.
The first association is Split with James McAvoy, which tells the story of a man with the same disorder. However, there are fewer personalities in one person than 23, and there are no Beasts at the end of the film. What unites McAvoy’s character and the real people in Lviv’s film is the personality of the happy child in each of them; the identity that each victim was stripped of long ago... was stripped of by people who dared not. Do rapists think about the trail they leave behind? Becoming obsessed, angry at everyone around, drinking out of fear of sexual intimacy are few of the options for saving victims from themselves. Until you scream for help on every corner, until you talk openly about what happened, no one will notice the nonverbal cries for help. This will help to overcome the problem.
The main characters of the film combine the incompatible, but at the same time live, love and work, fight every second with themselves and with the world around them. Recognize yourself? Words of support come out from the screen for those who are working on themselves and changing every day – each of us. This film is more than a description of life in spite of mental disorders. This film is a laser microscope for our lives.