"Sunny Intervals and Showers is a profound contribution that manages to portray all the mess and backchat of family life better than any film I can remember. I cannot imagine a richer resource--other than, God forbid, living the situation oneself."
--Michael Rabiger, Professor & best-selling author, Directing the Documentary
Sunny Intervals and Showers follows Dr Allan Levi and his family in the aftermath of Allan's diagnosis with manic depression. Filmed over a year with Allan, his wife Jackie, and their three children, the film is an intimate and surprisingly funny portrait of a marriage and a family in crisis.
Endearing yet self-obsessed, Allan leaves a career as a medical researcher and University Professor to start a business selling model airplanes throughout England. Jackie, a doctor who met Allan in medical school, struggles to come to terms with the unexpected role of being a 'carer' for a mentally ill husband. But is Allan's increasingly frenetic lifestyle evidence of illness, eccentricity, or simply hard work?
An observational documentary, Sunny Intervals and Showers depicts one man's and one family's life with warmth, humor, and optimism. Rather than being told what to think, viewers are given the opportunity to draw their own conflicting conclusions about the nature of truth, reality, and madness. Through Allan and the Levi family, we experience the often dramatic reality of living with manic depression and the surprising consequences of being labeled mentally ill.
"Incredibly absorbing--a riveting film. I hadn't expected to see such high drama -- almost unbelievable. I am still reeling."--Jenny Towndrow, Author, Love and Madness
