The documentary NCR: Not Criminally Responsible by John Kastner tells the story of Sean Clifton, who savagely attacked a stranger in a psychotic frenzy and tried to stab her to death in front of scores of witnesses, and follows him through treatment and back onto the streets.
The documentary NCR: Not Criminally Responsible by John Kastner tells the story of Sean Clifton, who savagely attacked a stranger in a psychotic frenzy and tried to stab her to death in front of scores of witnesses, and follows him through treatment and back onto the streets.
Five months after its world premiere at Hot Docs created a sensation, John Kastner’s NCR: Not Criminally Responsible is having a major impact on professionals in the mental health and legal worlds as well as documentary film lovers.
No one who attended the premiere in April will forget the moment at the end of the screening when the victim, Julie Bouvier, went public, appearing onstage at the Isabel Bader Theatre, along with her parents, to show that she had come to understand and forgive Sean Clifton, the knife-wielding stranger who attacked, disfigured and almost killed her in a Cornwall, Ont., mall in 1999.
And now, having had just a handful of small screenings, NCR is about to reach a much larger audience.
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Last week, Kastner screened it for a room packed with 170 psychiatrists at the annual conference of the Canadian Psychiatric Association.
Some psychiatrists were stunned that Bouvier and her parents, so angry at first with her attacker, could forgive him. They wanted to know what changed their minds. The answer, according to Kastner, is that the film let them see the man beneath the so-called monster.
Rendezvous With Madness Film Festival has selected the doc for a special screening Sunday, Oct. 6, at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in connection with Mental Awareness Week. Good luck getting tickets; the event has been sold out for weeks.
It comes to CBC Television in a cut-down version on Oct. 17 via the Doc Zone series; the full-length film will be shown Oct. 20 on CBC’s Documentary Channel. And soon, on the NFB website, you’ll be able to download it or buy the DVD.
Even Kastner, who has won four Emmy Awards, is surprised by the overwhelming response.
“I’ve had many films that attracted considerable attention but never anything else like this,” he says.
As The Guardian said in a huge spread when the doc was shown at a festival in Sheffield, what’s unique about NCR is that the story is told from both sides, by the random victim and her mentally ill attacker.
But the most significant and unanticipated reaction has come from the legal community.
“Our goal was to help destigmatize psychiatric patients for the general public, “ Kastner explains, making people understand and even empathize with a guy who had committed a horrifying act of violence.
The response of the audience shows that goal was achieved.
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But what’s amazing is the way the legal community has jumped on the film, with one request after another to use the film for training, including crown attorneys who appear at Ontario Review Board hearings but have never been inside a forensic psychiatric hospital. That’s why watching the film is a revelation.
Indeed, a crown attorney from the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, who organized a screening for new crowns as part of a course, told Kastner: “They loved it. Now they can picture what actually goes on in these places. We’ll be using it in the future. There’s nothing out there remotely like it.”
Why has this doc generated such a strong response from professionals? Because it’s a breakthrough. For the first time, NCR lets people experience the whole process, from the moment a mentally ill person commits a violent crime, through the hospitalization and treatment of the perpetrator, and then the gradual release into the community, along with consideration of all the safety issues that raises.
“These institutions have been hidden from the media and the public for decades,” Kastner explains. “For the first time the film shows a real sense of the treatment process. Thus, for many professionals, it becomes an invaluable introduction to the issue.”
Dealing with the fallout has become a time-consuming occupation for the veteran filmmaker. He has been invited to Rideau Hall by the Governor General for a mental health event. NCR was selected to open a convention of Canadian psychologists in Vancouver. It is being used as a teaching tool by Osgoode Hall Law School, York University’s criminology program and Ryerson University’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology. Olivia Chow plans to screen it for her constituents at the Bloor Cinema on Nov. 19.
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In mid-November, Kastner will be in Ireland for the Cork Film Festival, which is not only screening his doc but creating a half-day discussion event called “Battle for the Brain.”
Even if you don’t have a professional or direct personal connection with the subject, NCR is stunning as human drama, reality division.
Correction - October 2, 2013: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated Not Criminally Responsible’s screening date at Bloor Cinema.
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