Hot Docs 2025: Life After Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

In 2022, director Reid Davenport made a splash with his debut film, I Didn’t See You There. In the film, he documents the harsh reality of a disabled adult in a prejudiced society. Positioning the camera in his motorized support chair, Davenport glimpses at the rough treatment that disability can elicit from society. Additionally, the film earned a nomination for Best Documentary Feature at that year’s Gotham Awards and also won the Truer Than Fiction Prize at the Independent Spirit Awards. Three years later, Davenport is back with his sophomore effort, Life After. Here, the director deepens his role as a researcher on film in the history and representation of disability on the screen. In his latest, he weighs in on the right to life issue using the story of Elizabeth Bouvia, a woman with multiple health issues that have diminished her quality of life, and her case for the right to an assisted death as it passed through the California court system. Davenport uses her experience to understand how the issue has evolved over the last thirty years.

Even though Life After leans heavily on archival footage, Davenport does not abandon his style. The camera attached to his wheelchair, that records his reality, remains a vital element of his filmmaking. This technique presents the starting point for his journey of discovering the aftermath of Bouvia’s memoir. He points out that her biography on Wikipedia has not been updated since her losing her lawsuit. Davenport wants to meet Bouvia in order to better understand the complex public discussion that her story generated back then. Going back, she would state in a local newspaper how she felt trapped in a useless body. It presents an utterly despairing vision she had of herself and her disability. Asking for a dignified death, she considered herself to be a burden, financially, physically, and emotionally.

In this sense, the director proposes his thesis on the problematic aspect of encouraging assisted suicide to those with any disability. He interviews the wife of Michael Hickson, who tells the story of her husband who suffered a spinal cord injury and his guardianship by his sister. Placing him in a long-term care facility, where he would catch the COVID-19 virus and die soon after. Hickson’s wife believes the facility, that was supposed to treat his disease, was responsible for his death, which she considered to be murder. This incident, in turn, would spark a debate around the dangers of long-term facilities who face their own respective problems, such as overworked staffs and the need for government oversight. Hickson’s story is similar to the story of Michal, a man who, after losing his mother and his sole caregiver, was only afforded offer eleven hours of care at home from the Canadian government, otherwise he must spend the rest of his life living in a specialized facility. As a result, he decided to turn to MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) as an alternative.

Across its three different subjects (Elizabeth, Michael, and Michal), Life After takes an interesting look at the labeling of disability and assisted suicide as the sole alternative. Besides the cruciality of the debate, it suffers from the same problem as Davenport’s debut. His filmmaking style relies more on an oral scheme rather than a visual approach. In this sense, the director applies archival use as the foundation of his film, which is a step up from his freeform debut. However, its three different approaches to the discussion do not work well together, while the film lacks a stronger aesthetic sense regarding its storytelling. When it is about Bouvia, it reaches different heights in its discussion on how the disabled should get assistance. It is the most profound deepening of the topic. Yet, the other two stories leave the film feeling disjointed.

In the end, though Life After marks an evolution in Davenport as a director, its format and structure lead to a film that is not cohesive enough to empower its vital debate.

Score: 50/100

*still courtesy of Hot Docs*

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Pedro Lima

Brazilian film writer. He is also a producer and executive producer for Zariah Filmes. Member of the International Film Society Critics Association (IFSCA), International Documentary Association (IDA), and Gotham and Media Film Institute.