When director Katrine Philp's sister-in-law became ill, she felt despair and sadness watching her family grapple with the emotional pain. Her sister-in-law was suffering from what Philp describes as “bacteria running berserk in her body” and while she survived, Philp says her recovery was a lengthy, strenuous process.
Philp chatted with CEO Joe Primo via Skype in May 2018, long before video chatting became the new normal in the age of COVID-19. Production on the film was completed before the pandemic struck, but its release is more timely than ever, as the world emerges from a moment of collective trauma. Primo immediately fell in love with Philp’s vision, citing her “gentleness and warmth” as reasons he trusted her to film at the facility.
“At Good Grief, we talk about death being a biological event,” Primo says. “I've heard multiple iterations where somebody will say, ‘Mommy is in heaven,’ but then a day or two later, they're standing around a coffin, in a cemetery. Everybody's crying and the child is like, ‘Wait, if Mommy's in heaven, who's in the box? Why are we here? What is this about?’ And that's because of how adults teach and talk to children about death.
While filming, their children would remain behind the scenes, but when the cameras were off, they played with the Good Grief kids. “When you are portraying families in one of those situations, you could imagine how difficult it could be to have a film crew there,” Philp says. “I think coming there as a family and not as a crew helped a lot to gain their trust and to have them relaxed in the situation and to get close to them.”in 2018, Philp’s father died unexpectedly.
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