Sunny Intervals and Showers

Jonathan Goodmann Levitt, UK, 2006, 69 mins
+ Q&A with Director Jonathan Goodmann Levitt.

Dr Allan Levi was recently diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder and suspended from his job as a medical school Professor. As Allan changes careers, his wife Jackie and their three children struggle to cope in this intimate and at times funny portrait of a marriage and a family in crisis.

Events unfold on-screen as Allan starts a business distributing a new type of model airplane throughout England. Jackie, a doctor who met Allan while they trained in medicine together, must come to terms with the unexpected role of being a 'carer' for a mentally ill husband. But is Allan's increasingly frenetic lifestyle evidence of illness, eccentricity, or simply hard work?

Michael Rabiger, best-selling author of Directing the Documentary, refers to Sunny Intervals as "a profound contributionthat portrays the mess of family life better than any film I can remember." Through this unique and timely film, we come to understand the dramatic reality of family life with mental illness - and also the surprising consequences of simply being labelled mentally ill.