This film won the James Lyons Editing Award For Documentary Feature, sponsored by Technicolor Postworks NY; it was presented to editor Toby Shimin at the Maverick Awards Dinner in Kingston, NY.
By Thomas Cale, Living Rhinebeck Magazine and Cale Artworks
Rhinebeck, NY (The Hollywood Times) 10/16/17 – After losing her sister Ruth to suicide, Hope decides to cope with her pain years later by pouring over her sister’s journals and photographs that have been locked away in storage. In an attempt to protect herself emotionally by documenting this process, Hope finds herself becoming obsessed with her sister’s thoughts and feelings which are buried in Ruth’s art and detailed in her datebooks. What is revealed is a parallel in the behaviors of the sisters. In understanding Ruth’s mental illness and depression, Hope begins a grieving process which uncovers her own dark history of addiction. In the end Hope is able to realize Ruth’s dream of sharing her beautiful photography with the world, but it does not erase the pain of losing her best friend.
32 Pills is a riveting, brutally honest documentary that delivers an extremely poignant message about mental illness and coping with the loss of a loved one to suicide. As Hope explained at the film’s New York premiere during the Woodstock Film Festival, “The greatest healing that I’ve experienced through this film comes when I share it with an audience.”
