‘If I had a choice to get rid of my illness, I wouldn’t … It defines me.’
A deeply honest and illuminating short, Trust Me invites viewers to step into the disorienting extremes of living with bipolar disorder. For the film, the German Argentinian director Melanie Cura Daball, who is of Syrian descent, interviewed her friend Anne Chataigné about her long journey from struggle and disbelief to recovery and reconciliation. She then melded Chataigné’s account with reenactments and vibrant, pastel-inflected animations to bring her story to life.
Capturing Chataigné’s swings from deep depressions to the fleeting highs of shoplifting and hypersexuality amid manic episodes to, ultimately, self-acceptance, the genre-traversing work chronicles her experience with nuance and compassion. In portraying the vulnerability, harm and stigmatisation Chataigné has confronted, as well as how her mental illness has affected her loved ones, Cura Daball crafts a compelling portrait that’s unflinching in its honesty, yet coloured with hope.
Via Director’s Notes