Beautiful Something Left Behind
Director: Katrine Philp Run Time: 88 min. Rating: NR
Presented in the Virtual Screening Room in partnership with Tuckman Media.
“One of the more emotionally enveloping documentaries not just of this year but of recent memory, Philp’s film is one of profound intimacy and deep seeded humanism.”
– Joshua Brunsting, Criterion Cast
About the film:
Winner of the Documentary Feature Competition at SXSW 2020.
In New Jersey, the Good Grief community helps children process the loss of a parent or a sibling with empathy and compassion. Children meet with one another and with counselors to talk and to play, working through complex emotions in places like “the volcano room” and “the hospital room.”
Filmed over the course of a year, director Katrine Philp allows the children to tell their own stories without an adult filter. Heartbreaking and humorous, experiencing the questions about life and death through their open and curious minds ultimately reminds us of the importance of human connection in both times of grief and times of joy.
About the filmmaker:
Director Katrine Philp graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 2009 with her award-winning short documentary, Book of Miri. She won the Audience Award at the American Documentary Film Festival in 2014 for her debut feature documentary Dance for Me. The film was selected for POV on PBS and was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2015.
She co-founded the production company Good Company Pictures in 2014. Among their projects, she directed the 2016 TIFF Kids selection Home Sweet Home following a 10-year old refugee from Myanmar, and the award-winning 2018 documentary False Confessions focusing on the dark side of the American justice system through defense lawyer Jane Fisher-Byrialsen, who fought false confessions cases including that of Korey Wise of the Central Park Five.
While filming Something Beautiful Left Behind, Philp worked through the grief of losing her own father. Watch her virtual acceptance speech at the SXSW Film Awards for this feature, previously titled An Elephant in the Room.
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