Sisters Interrupted – Raindance Film Festival 2023

Director: Caroline Sharp

Screened at the Raindance Festival, Sisters Interrupted is a personal film about epilepsy. It begins with bleak statistics: 50 million people are diagnosed with epilepsy each year and there is no known cure. We are introduced to two sisters, Tamsin and Chelsea Leyland. Tamsin has severe epilepsy and autism and is living in full time care. Each seizure, we are told, damages the brain and makes the next seizure more likely. Doctors told Tamsin’s parents she would be dead by the age of 21.

But Tamsin has now reached her late thirties and the film is testimony to the deep affection between the two sisters who are regularly seen together laughing and chatting. Chelsea, however, feels strongly that Tamsin’s ability to communicate is limited by the drowsiness caused by her anti-convulsant drugs.

Chelsea moves the US when she is 19 and makes a success of DJ-ing. But she herself begins to develop strange symptoms and is diagnosed with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. She too is given anti-convulscants and finds their side-effects ‘horrific’. She is good at putting into words the experience of having seizures – the terrible fear of exposure, the dread of the arrival of the next one.

When Chelsea gets hold of medical cannabis, her symptoms disappear. Against her doctor’s orders, she weans herself off prescription medication. It is at this stage the film veers off in a different direction, focusing more on Chelsea’s evangelical belief in the power of medical cannabis and her anger at its not being universally available on prescription in the UK. She believes that her sister should be given medical cannabis too, and complains vigorously when Tamsin’s neurologist won’t prescribe it. Her passion is undoubted, but she doesn’t go for nuanced argument. We can probably think of many reasons why a severely disabled patient may not be prescribed the product and Chelsea’s righteous anger doesn’t lend force to her position. There’s not much context here. When she speaks to a lone expert, she chooses the controversial champion of psilocybin, Professor David Nutt, whose argument is that it is unethical not to prescribe medical cannabis. But he is not given sufficient time to explain his research, so it’s hard to form an opinion.

It’s also quite hard to get over the fact that Chelsea is undoubtedly privileged and that the high production values of the film are thanks to her wide circle of connections. It’s all appealingly filmed and well directed. But ultimately it remains a film that can’t decide what it’s about. Is it about epilepsy itself, or the relationship of the two sisters of the title? Or is it really about Chelsea the feisty campaigner? She is regularly shown expressing compassion for her Tamsin, especially towards the end of the film when she hears her condition has deteriorated. But this very personal angle means there is insufficient detachment, so any argument put forward lacks depth and development.

Sisters Interrupted is screening at the Raindance Film Festival 2023.