Years with ALS have left Kathryn paralyzed and needing 24-hour care. With her mind intact and having opted for mechanical breathing, she could live like this indefinitely. But the situation has embittered and alienated her husband Said, frustrated her grown son Noah, and proved too much for many nurses and aides. Kathryn often falls into despair, but she has been holding on to see her daughter’s wedding day. This project draws on 930 hours of footage—all filmed without any crew present from a fixed camera from Kathryn’s point of view. The result is a profoundly intimate, layered and wryly funny portrait of a family at its breaking point.

About The Team

Noah Amir Arjomand is an Iranian-American sociologist at Indiana University with degrees from Columbia and Princeton Universities. He is the author of Fixing Stories: Local Newsmaking and International Media in Turkey and Syria, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Noah’s photography has been published in The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and PBS Frontline, and he has written and directed animated educational videos for the National Endowment for Democracy and other nonprofit organizations.

Adam Isenberg's debut documentary A Life Without Words won the 2012 Margaret Mead Filmmaker Award and Best Doc at Cinélatino Toulouse, among other accolaids. It told the story of two deaf siblings in rural Nicaragua who had been denied access to a sign-language community. He co-produced and co-edited Tüzen’s debut fiction feature Motherland (2015), which premiered in Venice, for which he earned the Best Editing award from the Turkish Film Critics’ Association (SIYAD). Previously, Isenberg hosted and, along with Senem Tüzen, co-created and co-directed the long-running travel documentary series Adem’in Seyir Defteri on Turkish State television. He is from California, lives in Barcelona and holds Spanish citizenship.

Senem Tüzen's debut film Motherland (2015), which she also wrote, plumbed the depths of a layered and dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship in an Anatolian village. It premiered at Venice Critics’ Week and won multiple international and domestic awards including two FIPRESCI prizes as well as Best Film, Best Directing and Best Script from the Turkish Film Critics’ Association. She produced and edited Adam Isenberg’s documentary A Life Without Words (2011).