Carmela, a life of freedom

The goal of this project is to produce a documentary film that will be unique in its kind combining VFX with science and social activism. It will tell the story of my mother, Carmela, who was diagnosed with a rare variant of Alzheimer's called PCA, a terrible disease with visuo-spatial limitations that prevented her from recognizing faces (even family faces) or performing the most basic tasks such as getting dressed, walking normally or reading. As caregivers, my family and I had a hard time figuring out what were my mother's daily needs and the majority of healthcare workers didn't know about PCA symptoms neither. Interviewing her neurologist and using different VFX to depict specific symptoms such as prosopagnosia, simultagnosia or visual ataxia will be of precious help for families and healthcare workers in the same situation, helping them understand how a person with PCA sees the world. Unlike Alzheimer's patients, my mother was constantly aware of the degenerative nature of her illness and that is why she tried to commit suicide two years ago, before the legalization of Euthanasia in Spain. After this attempt she went through a coma and a forced psychiatric confinement against her will and her family's. This part of her story, along with interviews of activists that fight for the right to die with dignity and against violence in psychiatric hospitals will involve society at large in the defense of these universal Human Rights.