"An unusually unsentimental, everyday document of ALS, tender in the expressly painful manner of a fresh bruise.”

—Guy Lodge

 Variety



EAT YOUR CATFISH
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, and proved too much for many nurses and aides. Her grown son Noah, who lives with Kathryn and Said in their New York City apartment, struggles to balance his academic obligations with those he feels to his mother. The disease has also been a destructive force complicating relations between everyone in her family. 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.


"An astonishingly open, moving, funny and challenging insight into the world of a woman paralysed but with her mind intact…an intimate and powerful portrait of a family stretched to its very breaking point.”

—Mark Adams

Business Doc Europe


"Intimate, brutally honest...crucially, the film gives Kathryn a platform to tell—and indeed show—her story, in her own unique way. Her lingering hope is that viewers don’t think she’s pathetic, but plucky. Painstakingly edited by Adam Isenberg and Senem Tüzen, this film grants her that wish.”

—Nikki Baughan

Screen International



“One of the most emotionally enthralling cinematic experiences you will ever have. It will leave you vibrating with anger and sympathy, but also joy and hope."
—Christopher Lloyd, Film Yap

"Some of the most discomfiting marital arguments ever captured on screen, in fiction or otherwise.”

—Guy Lodge

Variety



production company
ZELA FILM

directors
ADAM ISENBERG
NOAH AMIR ARJOMAND
SENEM TÜZEN

producers
ADAM ISENBERG
NOAH AMIR ARJOMAND
SENEM TÜZEN

cinematographer
NOAH AMIR ARJOMAND

sound recorder
NOAH AMIR ARJOMAND

editing consultant
TOBI SHIMIN

music
DANIEL WHITWORTH

post supervisors
FRANZISKA ZERNACK DENIZ KAYIK

head of sound
MICHAEL KACZMAREK

in-house producers
CATHERINE MORAWITZ
MICHAEL NAGEL

sound design & mix
ADRIAN LO

foley artist
JOO FÜRST

foley editor
ANDREAS HARTWIG

VFX producer
RUFIN WIESEMANN

VFX supervisor
MARKUS FRANK

VFX coordinator
STEFAN KERBEL

color grading
SILVIA POZZI

compositing artists
KRISTIN FEIST
VICTOR MANSKE
LUKAS MENZEL
FELIX REIMET
BIRGER SCHIRRMEISTER
MARTIN SPRINGER


Support
Supported by the Catapult Film Fund, Cinereach, Field of Vision, the Bloomington Arts & Humanities Council, and the Center for Documentary Research and Practice at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Selected to the 2020 Sheffield Doc/Fest MeetMarket (under the working title 'Caring for Kathryn'), and Meetings on the Bridge at the Istanbul Film Festival, where it received the Cine Chromatix Post-Production Award.

WORLD SALES:
Zela Film
info [at] zelafilm.com

NORTH AMERICAN DISTRIBUTION:
Grasshopper Film
12 East 32nd Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10016 US
Phone: +1 (646) 586-3060
contact form
North American institutional DVD & VOD


TRAILER


PRESS KIT



©2024