Film Forum

Winner, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award, 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Disabled filmmaker Reid Davenport (I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE) trenchantly probes the legacy of Elizabeth Bouvia — a disabled California woman who, at the age of 26, sought “the right to die.” Her 1983 case provoked a national debate about the value of disabled lives, and Davenport sees echoes in chilling contemporary cases of disabled people dying prematurely — at their own hands and from a broken health care system. Through moving interviews and rich archival material, LIFE AFTER looks critically at where progressive values of bodily autonomy collide with the devaluing and fear of disabled lives.

Presented with support from The Richard Brick, Geri Ashur, and Sara Bershtel Fund for Social Justice Documentaries and The Endowed Fund for Emerging Filmmakers

2025     99 MIN.     USA     MULTITUDE FILMS & INDEPENDENT LENS/PBS

Reviews

“Surprising, insightful, moving, and politically far-reaching… Made with a personal fervor that never loses sight of reportorial specifics.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Challenges an able-bodied audience’s preconceptions about the lives of disabled people, as well as upends the expectations of how documentaries are supposed to unfold.”
– Esther Zuckerman, IndieWire

“Empathetic and confrontational…weaves a powerful first-person perspective with a journalistic investigation into disability justice…An engrossing, moving and most importantly confrontational movie about the right to die and disability justice.”
– Murtada Elfadl, Variety

“[A] keen, structural analysis of our presumptions about what a good life looks like— and who can have it.”
– Devika Girish, Film Comment

“There’s an urgency and refreshing honesty that courses through Davenport’s exploration, particularly in how he refuses to tiptoe around any hard conversations and his willingness to abandon niceties to get at real issues.”
– Zachary Lee, RogerEbert.com