Award-winning filmmaker Reid Davenport’s new project, “Life After,” an entry in the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Documentary Competition, is more than the sum of its parts.It starts out with a 1983 court hearing where Elizabeth Bouvia, a Californian woman with disabilities, sought the “right to die” and kick-started a national debate about body autonomy, dignity and the value of the lives of those with disabilities.Close to the film’s ending, the audience sees Davenport, a visibly disabled person himself, pulling up newspaper clippings, ads and other propaganda that subtly and, sometimes, overtly encourages the “humane” marginalization, institutionalization and even assisted-killing of those with disabilities.Davenport said he made this film not through the fear of a dystopian future where disabled people would be put away or erased from society.“I made the film expecting that society hasn’t changed since the beginning of the 20th century where the Nazis actually modeled their eugenics movement after the United States,” he said. “So, I think we made this film knowing that society will continue to do the same thing, just in different ways.”Throughout the film, Davenport examines Bouvia’s story, which led him to other stories, including the case of Texan Michael Hickson, whose wife says he was murdered by doctors; the case of Wisconsin teen Jerika Bolen, who was given the OK to end her life; and the story of disabled computer programmer Michal Kaliszan contemplated MAID when his only alternative was entering an institution.On the surface, the film addresses the ethics and concept of assisted suicide or medically assisted in dying (MAID), which is legal in some states and countries. However, through the stories of Bouvia and others, the film directly examines other hard-pressing issues that the population of people with disabilities come up against every day, according to Davenport.  This film isn’t only about assisted suicide. It’s about the ways society actively marginalizes disabled people, he said. “So in telling these stories, I knew we would be able to touch upon healthcare, poverty and, most recently, the Affordable Care Act, institutionalization and issues disabled people are facing (that) are not framed as disability issues,” he said.Bouvia disappeared from public view after going through years of hearings, press interviews and public scrutiny, which added to Davenport’s interest in her story.“There was this mystery that began to shroud around her about what happened to her,” he said. “Over the years, I saw the questions that her story raised.”As Davenport dove into the research, other issues he had suspected regarding socio-economic status, mental wellness and societal norms began to emerge.Some of those questions included who had the right to ask for assisted suicide and in what terms could those requests be justified and granted.“While (those ideas were) always in the back of my head, (they) became activated so many times by what we were seeing today,” he said.The stories of Bouvia, Hickson, Bolen and Kaliszan “flowed into the pot,” Davenport said.“We really started out with these stories, and they were powerful, and they packed different punches,” Davenport said. “We knew we could raise the questions we wanted to through these stories.”Principal photography started in August 2022, said producer Colleen Cassingham of Multitude Films.“We spent a couple of years in deep research and development,” she said. “We conducted so many pre-interviews and throwing the scope really wide, because we didn’t know what container the film would take.”What audiences will see on the screen is what Davenport had initially proposed, according to Cassingham.“It was really cool to see the connections of these seemingly disparate stories and cases actually turn into the fabric of the film that we landed on,” she said. “Reid knew that deep down he had a sense that this film would touch on big issues like poverty, healthcare, other issues that aren’t framed as disability issues, even though they are on the forefront of what disabled folks face.”The stories in the documentary are interspersed with segments of Davenport’s personal experiences as a person with disabilities.“I really wanted a bit of separation from my personal life, but at the end of the day, we thought (that) was a necessary device for people to connect with the film via my point of view,” he said. “We have snippets where we try to have viewers come into my physical perspective, occupy a disabled body and reflect on the stories we were telling from a disabled perspective.”Throughout the filmmaking and editing process, Cassingham was taken aback by a statistic revealed by the Health Authority 30 years after Oregon became one of the first states in the nation to pass assisted-suicide legislation.The study revealed that being a burden, loss of dignity and losing control of bodily functions — not pain and suffering — were among the top five reasons that patients request assisted dying, she said.“That statistic showed to me that disability and the cultural and society fear of disability is at the heart of how this legislation is currently being used,” she said. “That was really telling to me.”That deep-seated fear of disability in society informs who is valued and who isn’t, Cassingham said. “This has huge implications on society as a whole, and (the film) really is a chance to call us all in to work for the strengthening of social support systems and services, strengthening universal healthcare and of things that broad swaths of society needs,” she said.“Life After” also addresses how the disability is portrayed in the media through archival footage and interviews, Davenport said.“Ninety-nine percent of the stories that are seen in the media about disability is about one disabled person, and that doesn’t help anybody,” he said. “I think what the press needs to do is start seeing disabled people as a collective, as a marginalized group of people, that face political issues that every marginalized group of people face.”Marginalization unites the disability community, Davenport said.“In order for disabled people to come out of second-class citizenship is for everyone to recognize all these different ways society actively discriminates against them,” he said.Cassingham enjoyed working the long hours with Davenport on “Life After,” after seeing his first, autobiographical documentary feature, “I Didn’t See You There,” which was given the U.S. Documentary Directing Award in the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.“I knew I wanted to work with Reid as an artist and as a thinker. So this was a dream come true,” she said. During the process, Cassingham faced some personal challenges.“As a person with leftist politics, who is deeply committed to issues of body autonomy, I thought I knew where I stood on the issue of assisted dying,” she said. “I was for it, and Reid’s perspective expanded my own. The perspective shift I had over the course of making this film is the sort of similar journey we want our audiences to experience.”Davenport also enjoyed working with Cassingham on the film.“As a director of independent films, you always take on a lot of producing work,” he said. “It wasn’t the case this time because Colleen never sleeps. She produces and she produces and she produces, which gave me the creative bandwidth and energy to think about the creative decisions, and also collaborate with Colleen on these creative decisions.”‘Life After’ in-person screening6:30 p.m., Jan. 27, The Ray Theatre 12:30 p.m., Jan. 30. Megaplex Redstone-2 6 p.m., Broadway Centre Cinema-6, Salt Lake City 6 p.m., Holiday Village Cinemas-1Online8 a.m., Jan. 30 11:55 p.m., Feb. 2The post ‘Life After’ shines light on disabilities and socio-economics appeared first on Park Record.