“Life After”

Have you ever wondered “Whatever happened to X” — someone who made big news but then faded from view and from public consciousness? Disabled film-maker, Reid Davenport, was reading a book by Paul Longmore* which contained a story about a woman named Elizabeth Bouvia (pronounced Boo-vay).

Bouvia was a young disabled woman who, back in 1983, petitioned the court to be allowed to starve herself to death in hospital. The hospital did not want to be the site of her suicide and the judge agreed. She lost her case and went on to live her life. Davenport wondered what that life looked like and if she had found happiness, so he searched for information. Finding nothing, including no obituary or date of death, he began to wonder if she was still alive. He tried to find family members and eventually hired a private investigator who found two sisters who were very cooperative with the film crew and were able to fill in many blanks. Bouvia herself had died, but not until 2014. She had lived over thirty years past her darkest hour of wishing for death. The film, with the help of her sisters, explores many social and personal factors that were driving her wish to die.

Davenport was concerned, of course, with the issues surrounding disability and assisted suicide. His research drew him to Canada, where the practice of ending the lives of people who are not otherwise dying has been legal since 2021. He interviewed several people whose names were familiar to those of us engaged with the issues here in Canada. Michal Kaliszan was featured, as was Sara Jama and others. He also featured an American woman whose disabled husband was refused medical treatment that was judged to be futile by his doctors in Texas.

As the film and its process unfolds, Davenport says, “This film is not about suicide, but about people who are desperate to find their place in a world that rejects them.” Bouvia’s words from an essay she wrote many years after the pubic events, read by one of her sisters, were “Over time I started to realize my education would not make me as independent as I wanted to be. Being trapped in a bureaucratic system from which I would never escape. This was my number one reason for wanting to end my life.”

In January, 2025, the Sundance Film Festival premiered “Life After”. Davenport’s film won a Special Jury Award. The film received reviews and critical acclaim from Variety, Indiewire, Forbes and others. While it has not to my knowledge received a distribution contract, the film-makers are inviting screening requests from community groups. I strongly urge you to watch for it, seek it out, bring it to your film club, book club, classroom, lecture hall, or any other venue you can think of. Watch for pickup by CBC and/or PBS. Meanwhile, watch Davenport’s intro to his film. I loved what he said about what he hopes the film will do: confuse you, challenge you, anger you, and inspire you to question and fight against the status quo.

• Why I Burned My Book, Chapter 8, Paul Longmore, 2003, Temple University Press