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14 movies and documentaries about Bipolar Disorder

14 movies and documentaries about Bipolar Disorder

April 3, 2024

Bipolar disorder can be one of the mood disorders that most myths circulate and, certainly, can be difficult to understand.

However, the world of cinema and documentaries has several examples that help to understand what this kind of mental and behavioral problems consist of.. They can be a good way to learn the way in which bipolarity arises and how it is presented through the acts of the person who experiences it.

Movies and documentaries about bipolarity

Below you can see a list of documentaries and films about Bipolar Disorder , that capture different facets of your symptom picture. They are not ordered by quality or by seniority.


1. Biutiful

A Mexican and Spanish production directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Javier Bardem. In her The relationship of a young man with death is narrated with a melancholy and subtle tone .

2. Crazy love

This film starring Drew Barrymore and Chris O'Donell narrates the romantic relationship between two young people, marked by the emotional ups and downs typical of Bipolar Disorder and the way in which they flee from the family and mental health institutions.

3. The Flying Scotsman

A review of the story of Graeme Obree, a well-known Scottish cyclist who presents Bipolar Disorder and, despite the problems that this entails, he managed to become an elite athlete.


4. Mr Jones

One of the clearest descriptions of Bipolar Disorder that can be found in a movie , thanks to the work of Richard Gere. Here, he represents a man with strong emotional ups and downs and sudden mood swings that maintains a complex relationship with his psychiatrist (Lena Olin).

5. Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive

A television documentary divided into two parts, about the way in which this English comedian, writer and actor lives his mental disorder . This, in particular, is a mood disorder known as cyclothymia, which is a mild form of Bipolar Disorder.

6. Van Gogh: painted with words

A docudrama on the life of the famous Dutch painter, embodied here by the famous actor Benedict Cumberbach . The way in which the phases of a tormented life of Van Gogh are presented are a good description of the symptoms of Bipolar Disorder.


7. Hours

A vertebrate film through 3 different eras and 3 different women who star in each one of them and who, in some way, are united by the work of the writer Virginia Woolf.

8. Normal Life

Like other films about Bipolar Disorder like Mad Love, it focuses on the relationship of two people, one of whom experiences bipolarity . In this case it is a policeman and a young woman whose mental stability is compromised.

9. Wilbur wants to kill himself

Wilbur is a man who, at first glance, seems to lack charm or humor. But nevertheless, the idea of ​​committing suicide is gaining more and more strength in his life , product of a pessimism that pursues him wherever he goes.

10. Michael Clayton

It's not a movie about Bipolar Disorder, but one of the characters that appear in it presents this mood disorder . This is one of the lawyers, Arthur Edens.

11. Blue Sky

This film talks about a marriage formed by a woman with mental instability that evolves in depression (Jessica Lange) and a US Army soldier who, in addition to suffering strong pressures in his work, is increasingly isolated socially.

12. The good side of things

A story that explores the personal side of those who experience this disorder firsthand. Two people with problems to relate meet each other and, without realizing it, they see that despite being very different the experiences they have had to go through make them find themselves in adversity.

13. Two worlds

A metaphor about the unstable character that occurs in people with bipolarity.

14. For all

This film, shot in the 80s, reflects the stigma of the disorder and adds the doses of humanity that patients had to squeeze to deal with a hostile environment .

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