Filmed over three years with her teenage daughter Holly, Mum and Me is the story of how Sue and her family have fumbled along trying to come to terms with her mother’s Alzheimer’s.
Sue’s widowed mother, Ethel, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s six years ago and now lives in a nursing home in Ayr, Scotland. Once a month Sue makes the 800 mile round trip from London to visit her, sometimes with her daughter Holly. The films tells the story of those visits, the conversations, the daily phone calls and the little holidays the three of them go on. The highs the lows. The guilt and the tears. The laughter and the fun. Good times and bad are described with equal honesty. It’s a brave film that pulls no punches as it explores what Alzheimer’s does to someone’s mind and the toll it takes on the family.
This is a film that will strike a chord with many, many people. It’s about family and it’s about love. The final commentary encapsulates the spirit of the film. “I want Mum to live forever and ever just the way she is. But sadly I know this won’t happen. Her Alzheimer’s means she’s going to get worse. All Holly and I can hope for is that in the time we’ve got left the three of us will laugh some more together”.
Already with a string of successful documentaries to her name, Sue Bourne has most recently produced Cutting Edge’s My Street, Wedding Days and the Emmy nominated The Falling Man.
Mum and Me was nominated for The Mental Health Media Awards 2008 and reached the final 4 in the TV Documentary category.
Mum and Me was also nominated for a Scottish BAFTA and reached the final 3.
As director of My Street and The Red Lion for Channel 4 and Mum and Me for BBC1 Sue Bourne has developed her own genre of documentaries that begin with a personal experience and attempt to say something more universal. Her films have seen her knock on the doors of all the houses in her London street for My Street, visit a number of pubs around the country with the most popular pub name in Britain, The Red Lion, and put together the story of her own experiences with her mother’s Alzheimers disease. A famed observational documentary maker, Bourne reveals an intense commitment to her subjects.
Other titles by Sue Bourne include:
Love, Life, Death in a Day
My Street
The Red Lion
Wedding Days