A Man Imagined reveals raw reality of man living on fringes

eAwazEntertainment

Montreal – Making its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the bold new National Film Board of Canada (NFB) production A Man Imagined captures the bitter day-to-day life of a man who is routinely overlooked and often feared, in a “documentary fable” by the maverick filmmaking duo of Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky.

A Man Imagined will be presented as part of the festival’s Short & Mid-length program, which will take place from Friday, January 26, to Monday, January 29. Cassidy and Shatzky will be attending the premiere in Rotterdam.

A Man Imagined is produced by Rohan Fernando and executive produced by Annette Clarke and Rohan Fernando.

About the film

A Man Imagined (62 min)
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/a-man-imagined

Pushing at the limits of non-fiction cinema, A Man Imagined is a bracingly intimate and hallucinatory portrait of a man with schizophrenia surviving amidst urban detritus and decay. Made in close collaboration with 67-year-old Lloyd, this immersive documentary fable follows the jagged path of a decades-long street survivor, across harsh winters and blistering summers, as he sells discarded items to motorists, sleeps in junkyards and lapses into near-psychedelic reveries.

When Lloyd reveals a startling detail from his past, the filmmakers try to help him piece together a story that spills out in fragments—a jigsaw puzzle of painful childhood abstraction that seems to hold an unspeakable mystery at its core.

With its subjective, lyrical camerawork and expressionistic sound design, the latest feature from directors Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky finds poetic power and transcendence in the harrowed mind of its protagonist, delivering a poignant meditation on life at the margins.