Titicut Follies

Named after the institution's musical talent show, Titicut Follies depicts the daily lives of the inmates/​​patients as they are ignored, taunted, mocked, force-fed, and stripped bare (literally and figuratively) by the guards, doctors, and social workers who are supposed to provide for their care, and who seem equally in need of treatment as those in their charge. Often misidentified as cinema verité or direct cinema due to Wiseman's ostensible refusal to comment on the images he presents, Titicut Follies is, rather, a filmed reality orchestrated with clinical precision — a reality that bears witness to some of the most frightful extremes of the human condition and captures the utter failure of the institutions charged with mitigating those extremes. Few works of art are more painful to experience than this film, and fewer still are as essential. (Toronto International Film Festival)