A Daughter Explores the Legacy of Her Father’s Visionary Mental Health Treatment in ‘Don’t Call Me Mad’

After discovering archive footage filmed by her psychologist father in 1990s Germany, the director zora kuettner he began to investigate his radical treatment of mental illness and the stories he spent his entire life hearing. The result is “Don’t Call Me Mad,” an examination not only of Dr. Kuettner’s visionary treatment methods, but also of how his past influenced his relationship with his daughter.

The project, selected as part of the IDFA The Forum Pitch program is Kuettner’s first feature film and is produced by Loran Dunn of Delaval Film, winner of the BFI Vision Award, and Charlie Phillips, former head of video for The Guardian, and Henry Singer of Sandpaper Film are executive producers.

“I think this movie has always been inside of me and now I felt the time was right to make it happen,” says Kuettner. “I think as a woman, if you’re minimally organized and have a good head on your shoulders, you very quickly get into the role of producer, and it can be quite difficult to jump into directing. With this film, no one else could tell this story. I am my father’s daughter, so I felt justified as the director, if you will.”

Loran, who is also working on a fictional film starring “Stranger Things” actor Joseph Quinn, adds: “I’ve known Zora for almost 10 years and I know she’s been working on this story for a long time. We started talking about it just before the pandemic and it played out in a way that I found very interesting. Seeing Zora recognize her voice within the film was something I really responded to as a producer, and I wanted to help her tell the story.”

Of the toll the film could take on her relationship with her father, Zora says, “There’s a fear of not only exposing him, but also exposing myself. I think it’s quite natural to have doubts as a filmmaker because some people look at my dad’s story and ask: why do I care? And then you dig deeper and the fact that he was a reformer isn’t really the story; the story tries to find the truth: what happened? I hope people come into the story because of this personal dynamic and are drawn to thinking about serious mental illness.”

“I started talking to my father about the film about 10 years ago, in 2013,” he continues, referring to the long preparation process he has had with his father. “I think he felt uncomfortable going on the trip. He was interested and had this longing to see his patients again and find out what happened, but I think he was also quite nervous and anxious about what it would mean for him to face that part of his life.

“The other thing is that I am finding myself as a filmmaker. When I started making this movie, I thought it was going to be about these amazing stories that my dad always told, and we’d meet his patients and he’d be a great hero. The movie turned out to be something of a calculation that dreams may not always be what we thought, and some things may be very different. It feels like the last leg of adulthood, getting to that point,” he adds.

Speaking about the importance of making “Don’t Call Me Mad,” Kuettner says, “There’s a certain amount of irony in the fact that I’m caught up in this idealistic hope of this movie, of wanting to tell this story in the right direction. Filmmaking is also a form of idealism, so you have a dream of what the film can be, and this is one of my driving forces.When I started working on the film, I had never heard a story that was remotely light-hearted or positive about what you can do with someone who has schizophrenia or hears voices Even though the truth I found is more complex than my dad originally proposed, I think I still want to capture some of that beauty, some of that magic, and some of that hope ”.