Someone Beside You

A documentary film by Edgar Hagen
98 Min, OV CH-German/English, 2006

Along with several courageous psychiatrists and their clients, the author sets out to film a documentary road movie that takes him to Switzerland, Europe, and the U.S. On their travels in mobile homes, they explore the depths of the human psyche in search of answers to the question: What is the human mind and how does it behave in psychotic extreme situations?
By the time Edgar Hagen meets the Buddhist monk and trained psychiatrist Edward Podvoll in the U.S., Podvoll has only a few more months to live. His vision – that courage and friendship have the power to make recovery from mental illness possible – is an inspiring legacy. In a dialogue between Western psychology and Eastern spirituality, a message of hope emerges: It is always possible to regain mental clarity no matter how severely confused a mind may have become.

Director’s Statement
We are shocked when a person is shaken to the core and just “snaps.” But it can happen to anyone, man or woman, rich or poor, young or old. A relationship of many years goes to pieces, a child dies… and suddenly even the strongest and most level-headed among us can find themselves in a locked ward. When that happens, those close to the person usually feel helpless, and often afraid, as well. Yet when the crisis has passed, we tend to block it out and pretend that nothing happened.

Why are we at such a loss? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we don’t really know what happens when people “crack up” and even less about how they become “normal” again? While we have meanwhile learned quite a lot about the mechanics of the brain, we still know next to nothing about the human mind and how it works, how it behaves in extreme situations, or how we can bring it back when it has been “lost.” Getting to the root of this uncertainty and general lack of knowledge was the challenge posed by this film.

This film tells of the human mind going through crisis. I was primarily interested in showing its gradual emergence from the state of mental breakdown rather than the process of disintegrating and spiraling into madness. This was possible by focusing on a visionary approach that draws on ancient knowledge to derive a new outlook and new ways of dealing with all kinds of extreme mental states – and that ultimately concerns every one of us. Edgar Hagen.


Main Characters in Someone Beside You:

Edward Podvoll / Lama Mingyur (1936-2003) was a physician, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Buddhist lama. One of his basic tenets was “If you have a mind, you can lose it.”

Jakob Litschig (55) a physician, psychiatrist, and psychotherapist in Zurich, has experienced psychotic episodes himself.

Kaspar, 49, Andrea, 27, and Anonymous, 38 – each of whom been committed to psychiatric clinics repeatedly over a period of many years – to the places where their psychoses first struck.

Karen (54) lives in Colorado. She experienced her first psychotic episodes in college.

Lama Lhundrup / Dr. Tilman Borghardt (47) is a physician and head of the retreat center at the Tibetan Buddhist monastery Dhagpo Kundreul Ling in France’s Auvergne region.

Eric Chapin (51) is a psychotherapist at the Windhorse project in Boulder, Colorado.

The above text is taken directly from the website of the film.


Edward Podvoll’s book “Seduction of Madness. Revolutionary Insights into the World of Psychgosis and a Compassionate Approach to Recovery at Home” is a highly recommended read!
For more information on the book go to Publications on therapies with people who hear voices.


For more information, go to the film’s website: Someone Beside You

See also the article in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 28/03/2007 (it is only in German…).




Back to Documentary films