Life After

United States | 2025 | 99 min

Language: English

Subtitles: Finnish (descriptive)

Suitable for audiences aged 12 and above

Director(s): Reid Davenport

Script: (unknown)

Cast: Michal Kaliszan Ann Gulliver, Ash Kelly, Teresa Castner, Rebecca Castner, Melissa Hickson, Ramona Coelho, Catherine Franzee, Sarah Jama, Alex Thompson, Julie Farrar

Production: Multitude Films, Straw House Productions, ITVS

Distribution: Multitude Films

Documentary | Essay Film

True Story Talking Point Society Crip Ciné In Finnish Memento Mori History

Screenings:

Both an investigative journalism piece and a first-person perspective, “Life After” derives its strength from clashing these two elements together and finding its story in the tension between them. Filmmaker Reid Davenport sets out to find what happened to Elizabeth Bouvia, a disabled Californian woman who demanded the right to terminate her own life in 1983. Adding his own personal perspective as a filmmaker living with disability, Davenport weaves an engrossing, moving and most importantly confrontational movie about the right to die and disability justice.

Davenport’s quest to find out what happened to Bouvia comes from his hope that she is still alive and somehow lived a long and happy life. The media presented her as someone who thought of herself as a burden and of her life as worthless. Davenport wants to correct that narrative and give her dignity and worth to all people living with disabilities who are discarded by society and medical institutions.

Murtada Elfadl, Variety

Updated 2025-08-26 16:45:09 UTC