Origin of the film

How should I protect my daughter from drugs and alcohol?

This was more than a question, it was an expression of fear…

I lost my brother mainly because of drugs. I needed reassurance. I wanted to understand how to educate my daughter and protect her. How to make her responsible, without scaring her or making her feel guilty.
Films which deal with drug addiction generally focus on the users or on former addicts.

My personal story has led me to look at things from a different point of view.

Following the road less travelled, I went to meet the brothers and sisters of addicts:

• Siblings, to whom questions are rarely asked, and whose pain is not always acknowledged.
• Siblings who are often very close to, and even the privileged confidants of the dependent person.
• Siblings who have to deal with the family story, and who themselves have issues with their own children.

It was a long road before I could come to terms with my own anxieties, and go to meet these siblings in 2019-2020…

In January 2012, I started co-writing a feature-length screenplay inspired by my family story: my brother’s addiction on one hand, and my blindness on the other.
The main objection to our finished version in 2014 was: “The story of a drug addict and a blind person is too much.” The same objections were raised by some of the ‘big’ publishers for a book project…

As a director once said to me: “Reality is sometimes stranger than fiction.”

However, I’ve always believed that our family story provides an interesting parallel: between a so-called ‘chosen’ situation on one hand, and an ‘imposed’ one, on the other. It enables us to question what lies behind addiction, and to no longer see the ‘drug-user’ as a delinquent.

So…

I bounced back to produce, with my own means, a documentary that gives a voice to those who are rarely heard: the brothers and sisters.
An offbeat way of looking at the way we perceive addiction.

Maybe the time has come for this approach…