Film about family and mental illness part of festival slate

When Canadian actor and filmmaker Katie Boland was presented with the Canadian best seller “We Are All in This Together,” she knew it was the project she had been looking for. The book addresses some mental illness in a family, beginning with the mother/grandmother, Kate, who took it upon herself to go over a waterfall in a barrel. She survives, landing in the hospital in a coma. When someone catches the event on a phone and it goes viral on social media, the family faces even more anguish.

Boland adapted the book into a screenplay, directed the movie and played the two main characters, adult twins.

“So much or this is very personal to me which is why the novel spoke to me,” she said. “There is a lot of mental illness in my family. I have had a lot of firsthand experience with people who had episodes, and had my own struggles with depression.”

Dedicating the film to her grandmother who had bipolar disorder, she said her grandmother was one of her heroines.

“She was bipolar at a time when there was no medication for a lot of her life and treatments were pretty barbaric,” Boland said. “She was very forward thinking, and she would be up front about it. I think she was extremely brave and destigmatized it in our little community and family.”

Creating “We Are All in This Together” gave her a way to talk about mental illness in a destigmatized.

“I felt the characters were well rounded,” she said. “It shows how difficult it is sometimes to love someone who is struggling.”

The sisters Boland plays, Finn and Nicki, are very finely drawn, Boland said. That was very helpful when it came to portraying them. She said she worked extensively with hair, wardrobe and makeup to create these two different women so the viewer would know exactly which one was on screen at a time.

“Within myself I had stopped drinking a year before we made the movie,” she said. “I thought of Finn as before and Nicki as how I was when I had just gone sober.”

In her publicity Boland states, “I was funnier, and braver. I took more risks. I believed in myself,” about the process of making this film.

“Just by believing that I could direct the film and play twins, I found an audacity in myself – an empowerment,” she said. “Then when I did, I felt like other people around me did also.”

The book’s author, Amy Jones, was supportive and liked the movie, Boland said.

“We were able to go to a film festival together in Canada and got to watch it in an audience of people together,” she said. “That was one of the highlights of my life creatively.”

The film was shot in 16 days. Boland said while it was difficult directing and starring in the same film, she would do it all again.

“But there does come a point where you are editing your own face, that it makes me too crazy for words,” she said. “I don’t know if I would do it again but I love creating, I love acting, I love directing.”

Boland is in post-production on her second foray as a feature film director for Lifetime Television. She also has a recurring role as an actress on the Apple and Disney + show “Five Days at Memorial” from Academy Award-winning John Ridley, alongside Vera Farmiga and Cherry Jones. As a writer, she has a television series in development with Ron Howard’s Imagine, Chernin Entertainment and several networks. 

“We Are All in This Together" is screening at the Las Cruces International Film Festival at 11 a.m., Saturday, March 5. The festival is taking place at Allen Theatres Cineport. Tickets are available at www.lascrucesfilmfest.com.