#heroin(e)

[webtoon-brackets]

Best Webtoon/Manhwa FL Early 2025, Round One

Claire, HEROIN(E)

Cherry Sinclair, Trapped At Home With the Male Leads

Voting ended onJul 25, 2025

[candycoatedemoboy]

I'm not the person you knew yesterday I've been used, abused along the way This is the side of me you pierced with pain These are the hands that couldn't hold your shame

Heroin(e) by Eva Under Fire

[straydog733]

Watching Resolution: Heroin(e) (2017)

A documentary: Heroin(e) (2017)

List Progress: 7/12

My knowledge of the town of Huntington, West Virginia began and ended with the fact that it is where the McElroy brothers grew up. But the 2017 short documentary Heroin(e) paints a complex and painful picture of this small town. Labelled the “overdose capital of America”, Huntington experiences opioid overdoses at ten times the national average, and heroin use has changed the entire landscape of the town. The documentary, by Elaine McMillion Sheldon, follows three women who are active in dealing with the crisis: a judge in drug court, a fire chief, and a street minister. Rather than go for hard statistics, the film follows the emotional journey of the three and how they try to help the addicts of Huntington. It is impactful in going for the heart, but I found myself wishing for a few more facts along the way.

The fire chief is the lynchpin of the documentary, and provides the most context about Huntington and what it looks like to be the person responding to overdoses multiple times a day, getting people breathing again with naloxone and then moving onto the next call. The street minister is the most informal worker, largely outside the system, and she spends her nights driving around, giving food and religious tracts to prostitutes and addicts, as well as helping them coordinate with various shelters and rehab centers. They talk about the struggle of having to help the same people over and over again, but that it is worth it for the few who manage to get clean and build a healthier life.

The judge is the one that I had the most questions about and felt like I needed more information on. All we really get is that she runs a “drug court”, but it seems to be some sort of hybrid program of law enforcement and group therapy. She is guiding people through rehab programs and having them share their successes and setbacks with each other, but is also doing things like assigning people on parole to house arrest or to time back in jail. It is like if your therapist could send you to prison, which feels like a very easily warped system. Of what is shown in the documentary, her system seems to work for some people, but it would have benefitted from a lot more explanation, as it seemed fairly contradictory on the surface.

For a forty minute documentary, Heroin(e) gets to the heart of its message and has some very resonating moments. The fire chief talks with a recovered addict as they are doing community outreach, and he realizes that this will be his first year in Huntington when he is not part of the overdose statistics. The quiet realization and pride on his face at that moment makes the film, and illustrates why the documentary was made. Everyone in the whole film knows that it would be easier to give up on their community and themselves, but it is the hard-won moments that keep them fighting.

Would I Recommend It: Yes.

[culturalhigh]

Documentaries and burden of adulthood

Monthly overview of cultural highs and lows - July

FILMS:

Burn Burn Burn, Chanya Button, 2015

The film’s washed out colors are at odds with what is supposed to be a saturated with emotions journey to scatter a late friend’s ashes. I also wished that the two main characters on this unusual road trip weren’t trying so hard to represent all the traits of the millennial generation.

Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes, 2008

A married couple (played by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) living in the  suburbs with two children starts evaluating thier life. Has it become what they were dreaming of when they first met? Is having a family a hurdle in self-realisation? Discussions between the two (children are more of a background prop, we are in the ‘50) reveal not only differences in their expectations but also indecisiveness and cowardness about making a real change. Frank isn’t sure if settling for predictability and safety in life is a sign of resignation or maturity. April aches for more spontaneity but her determination to start a new life in Paris is fueled by youngish fantasies. It is not easy being an adult...

Set it up, Claire Scanlon, 2018

I want a rom-com to suck me into in its whirlwind of will-they-won’t-they even if I know that they will. Set it up certainly doesn’t do that. The plot of tricking the main characters’ respective bosses into a relationship is contrived.  Harper and Charlie’s  (Zoey Deutch, Glenn Powell) version of the from-friends-to-lovers routine is dispassionate. Only the supporting characters played by Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs make this film interesting. 

The Feels, Jenée LaMarque, 2017

Sophia Takal and Joe Swanberg intorduced me to indie movies. They make and act in films that focus on studying intimate relations between characters and examining the small universe they inhabit. 

The Feels is doing exactly that. It’s not only Andi and Lu’s relationship that is put under the microscope shortly before their wedding, but also tensions between friends and family brought together for the bachelorette party. All of them will also reveal stories of their first sexual encounters.

The Ritual, David Bruckner, 2017

Watching horror movies is part of a personal effort to expand my horizons. I really enjoyed the first half of the movie that zoomed in on the male friendship to show how the men deal with guilt and blame connected with the death of a friend. Second half was more ridiculous than scary. 

Tully, Jason Reitman, 2018

Reitman and Cody (Diablo Cody - script author for Juno and Young Adult) duo have made a name for themselves by specialising in dispelling myths that mainstream media promote or the SOCIETY projects on us. With Tully they give us a non-instagram, physical portrait of motherhood. 

Extremis, Dan Krauss, 2016

It is insane that this 24 minutes long documentry delivers a balanced and nuanced commentary to one of humanity’s most complex and controversial issues - end-of-life decisions.

Heroin(e),  Elaine McMillion Sheldon, 2017

Three women, a fire deprtment chief, a judge and an activist, at the forefront of the U.S. opiod epidemic exhibit contagious kindness and empathy. A very serious and moving documentary.

The True Cost, Andrew Morgan, 2015

Inhumane treatment of workers in countries such as Bangladesh, damaging impact on the environment, vicious circle of shopping fueled by the low quality of clothes - fast fashion industry in a nutshell. 

TV:

Big mouth, S1, Netflix

A charming and funny cartoon about adloescence.

Bonus Family, S2, Netflix

A couple, their kids, their kids from previous marriages, ex-wifes, ex-husbands. It’s an amusing mess.

BOOKS:

Ganbare, Katarzyna Boni

A non-fiction book about how the Japanese endure tsunami and earthquakes tragedies the country is constantly at risk of.

My year of rest and relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh

It’s an intoxicating and spellbinding story about a woman who decides to start her life over but only after cleaning her mental slate with meds prescribed to her by a very irresponsible psychiatrist. I was devouring every page of the book with the same ease and sense of purpose the main character was popping her pills. 

[filmstopia]

Heroin(e) - Official Trailer 2017 - Netflix

New Post has been published on https://goo.gl/ggdcsc

Heroin(e) - Official Trailer 2017 - Netflix

Once a bustling industrial town, Huntington, West Virginia has become the epicenter of America's modern opioid epidemic, with an overdose rate 10 times the national average. This flood of heroin now threatens this Appalachian city with a cycle of generational addiction, lawlessness, and poverty. But within this distressed landscape, Peabody Award winning filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon shows a different side of the fight against drugs; one of hope. Directed by: Elaine McMillion Sheldon Cast: Jan Rader, Patricia Keller, Necia Freeman

(function(d,s,id)var js,stags=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="https://ia.media-imdb.com/images/G/01/imdb/plugins/rating/js/rating.js";stags.parentNode.insertBefore(js,stags);)(document,'script','imdb-rating-api');

[dweemeister]

Best Documentary Short Film Nominees for the 90th Academy Awards (2018, listed in order of appearance in the shorts package)

Where last year was replete with stories from the European migrant crisis and the Syrian Civil War, this year sticks to the United States. Three of these films tackle social justice (police brutality, elder care, recently-released prisoners), one profiles an artist with severe mental illness, and another on the ongoing American opioid epidemic.

Traffic Stop (2017)

On June 15, 2015, a black woman named Breaion King was dragged from her car and thrown to the ground multiple times after being pulled over by a white police officer for speeding in Austin, Texas. Directed by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner for HBO, Traffic Stop serves as both a profile of King – a mathematics teacher who appears to be an outstanding role model for her students – and a presentation of the dashboard camera footage seen in the film. Davis and Heilbroner cross-cut between these two halves of their movie, making the footage of King being arrested and driven to jail by the police much more difficult to watch as we learn more about her. She is what she wants to be in the classroom and in dance class, but in those precarious moments during the traffic stop, episodes of American police brutality towards black individuals run through her head, and we see the fear in her eyes and hear the terror in her voice.

Perhaps most telling is the conversation that King has with the police officer – who did not witness the initial confrontation and the bodyslamming – that drives her to jail, answering his own question about, “Why are so many people afraid of black people?”:

“Violent tendencies. I want you to think about that. I’m not saying anything. I’m not saying it’s true. I’m not saying that I can prove it or nothing. But 99 percent of the time when you hear about stuff like that, it is the black community that’s being violent. That’s why a lot of the white people are afraid, and I don’t blame them.”

Yet Traffic Stop is not revelatory nor unique in its presentation of police brutality (the film is, curiously, silent about any changes that can address this issue). What is most valuable about it is how it reminds the viewers that such police encounters on black bodies are fraught with fear – even for the most innocent.

My rating: 7/10

Edith+Eddie (2017)

Laura Checkoway’s Edith+Eddie (that use of a plus sign and no space annoys me to no end) was financed by Cher after she heard about the story on the local news. Edith and Eddie, interracial newlyweds aged 95 and 96 from Virginia when we meet them, met while splitting a $5,000 lottery. Their days pass quietly, and we quickly realize the love they have for each other. One of Edith’s daughters, citing her mother’s increasing forgetfulness and lack of clear mind, is attempting to take custody of her mother and move her to Florida so that her house can be sold. A court-appointed guardian sides with the daughters against Edith and Eddie – both opposed to this move. The film is a glimpse of an area that many are probably not familiar with: elder care and elder policy.

Do not be frightened by your lack of familiarity of those issues (the film could have benefited from explaining the legal procedures and each party’s rights in this dispute), because E+E will be impactful regardless of one’s knowledge in those areas. E+E is, without contest among this slate of nominees, the most emotionally intimate and – at film’s end – it packs an emotional wallop like none other. Like Traffic Stop, this is a film about an injustice, albeit an injustice that moves slowly over time, culminating in a moment that affirms the strength of love and how that same strength of love, when forcibly removed, can overwhelm.

My rating: 8/10

Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (2016)

Mindy Alper loves to create art. For Alper, it served as a release from her abusive father during her youth and as a release from a chaotic world that might not be receptive to her struggles with anxiety and depression, her speech impediments, and her unease with unfamiliar situations. Frank Stiefel directs Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405. The unusual title refers to the opening sequence, in which Alper – the sole interview subject for this biographical film – finds herself most at peace during standstill traffic on the I-405 in the Greater Los Angeles Area. Where for some – including yours truly – Southern California traffic is a source of rage, for her it is a moment of quiet and calm all too rare in a noisy world.

Nearing the maximum runtime for short films (according to Academy rules, a “short film” is forty minutes or shorter), Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 is needlessly repetitive. Details about Alper’s abusive father are repeated more times than is necessary; her personal story could be more streamlined or placed entirely into the front of the film so that the latter half can concentrate on her maturity as an artist over time. How Alper blossoms into an artist of her own, overcoming so many mental illnesses, will be deeply inspirational for those going through similar situations. She displays a sharp emotional intelligence – more articulate than many will ever expect. If only Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 could find the balance it sorely needed, then Alper’s story could have landed with a greater impact.

My rating: 6.5/10

Heroin(e) (2017)

Available on Netflix and co-funded by the Center of Investigative Reporting, Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s Heroin(e) follows three women in the town of Huntington, West Virginia. Huntington has one of the highest rates of opioid use and opioid death in the United States, and the three women involved want nothing more but to rid their community of its unfortunate reputation. The three women are Jan Rader, who, at the end of the film, becomes the the city’s fire chief and the first one in West Virginia; Judge Patricia Keller, who assists those in a rehabilitation program and listens and speaks to the recovering addicts with patience in a drug court unlike most expectations of what drug court might look like; and Necia Freeman, a representative of the Brown Bag Ministry who helps distribute food to local women are into sex work for payment in opioids. So the title is misleading as there are multiple heroines present in this movie.

But Heroin(e) is shoddily edited and its emphasis on Rader and Keller at the expense of Freeman disallows the audience to understand the extent and the health and social problems involved for women who are prostituting themselves for drugs. This is an unfortunate near-oversight that cannot be remedied by the film’s remarkable details – most hauntingly, the scene of an overdose at the checkout counter of a grocery store occurs while the employees and customers go about their jobs and shopping as if the firefighters and paramedics are not there. Otherwise, there is little that Heroin(e) adds to the conversation regarding the United States’ sprawling opioid epidemic from a bureaucratic, health-related, or social lens.

My rating: 6.5/10

Knife Skills (2017)

Edwins Restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio serves pristine French cuisine to its customers. One would expect that in a major city, but one surprising bit of Edwins (which is also a non-profit organization) is that its staff is almost entirely comprised of recently-released inmates – many of whom have never cooked nor served others before. Directed by Thomas Lennon (who has directed numerous PBS documentaries), Knife Skills follows the founder, Brandon Chrostowski (who himself has a troubled past), as he helps guide Edwins’ inaugural class of employees – who are there for a year to train and excel in their assigned jobs before graduation – to be the envy of Cleveland. Chrostowski has no tolerance for nonsense, and more than a few of the program’s participants drop out before the restaurant even opens. But for those men and women who push themselves to graduation day, it is a demonstration of their grittiness and resourcefulness that they will need in a changing, sometimes frightening world that they might not have envisioned for themselves.

Succinctly organized and tightly edited, Knife Skills is the most focused of this year’s nominees and never wastes its time by repeating ideas or facts to the audience. It is a delicious tale of second chances, self-renewal, and perseverance that anyone freed from prison should have. Knife Skills might not be as substantial as some of the short films in this category’s history and Chrostowski might not be as compelling a figure as, say, Gordon Ramsay, but the film is endlessly inspirational in its depiction of those who graduate from Edwins and those who do not. For cooking is not the most important lesson of those going into Edwins, but the strength of character and resilience when facing the unfamiliar. The film is currently available to watch via The New Yorker.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

From previous years: 88th Academy Awards (2016) and 89th (2017)

[jerichopalms]

#30: Heroin(e) (2017, dir. by Elaine McMillion Sheldon)

[foryourconsiderationads]

Heroin(e)       (The Hollywood Reporter, 2018)