This five-evening course, now in its third year, is offered for those who are interested in a psychoanalytically informed approach to documentary filmmaking through the lens of iconic point-of-view films about family secrets, trauma, and healing. The Course instructors: Karen Dougherty and Steven Silver, co-present each evening with a guest expert. Attendees will view each film in advance. This year’s central question: can documentaries heal (subject, filmmaker, viewer)? Can so-called therapy or “trauma” documentaries cause harm while posing as “therapeutic?”

Films, Topics, Discussants

April 22, 2026, Little Dieter Needs to Fly (d. by Werner Herzog, 1997)

Discussant: Karen Dougherty
Herzog’s masterful verité film tells of the harrowing of Dieter Dengler, a German-born American naval pilot and Vietnam War vet who was shot down over Laos, captured, and tortured in a prison camp by the army of North Vietnam. Decades later, Herzog takes Dieter, now a commercial pilot who with PTSD and OCD, back to Laos to recreate his story and dramatic escape. Was Herzog’s quest a therapeutic one (for filmmaker; subject), a form of filmic exposure therapy, or exploitation? Or both?

April 29, 2026, The Last Just Man (d. by Steven Silver, 2002)

Discussant: Steven Silver
Through first-person interviews and graphic footage, The Last Just Man tells a disheartening and harrowing story of events surrounding the 1994 Rwandan massacres. The film focuses on the head of the UN Peacekeeping Mission Brigadier General Romeo Dallaire, who was sent there to maintain a fragile peace accord. When violence threatened, his pleas for help went unanswered and Dallaire was left to face the struggle alone. Course Instructor and TIP Candidate Steven Silver describes how interviewing a traumatized, reluctant subject changed his way of thinking about the ethics of documentary film-making.

May 6, 2026, Prey (d. by Matt Gallagher, p. Border City Pictures, 2019)

Discussants: Matt Gallagher (Director/Producer) and Cornelia Principe (Producer)
Prey, directed by Matt Gallagher, centres on Rod McLeod, a man who sues the Basilian Fathers for restitution after having been abused in childhood by priest William Hodgson “Hod” Marshall. We discuss how Rod was affected by participating in the film, and how the film has encouraged victims of child sexual abuse to fight through the lifelong shame and trauma to begin their own healing journey. Other award-winning trauma-focused documentaries by this husband and wife team include How to Prepare for Prison (2016); Dispatches from a Field Hospital (2021) and Shamed (2025).

May 13, 2026

TBA

May 20, 2026, Love, Harold (d. Alan Zweig)

Discussant: Alan Zweig
No stranger to strong content, award-winning filmmaker Alan Zweig–A Hard Name (2009); Hurt (2015); Coppers (2019)–takes on the most painful of topics with his latest doc: Love, Harold examines the complexity and mystery of suicide through the lives of the departed and those left behind. Did his subjects find relief through the sharing of their story or is that just a filmmaker’s fantasy?

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Understand why engaging with the documentary form is of particular importance to psychoanalytic thinking and practice;
2. Define and recognize the uniquely psychoanalytic lens of point-of-view, verité, and observational documentary;
3. More fully appreciate the ethical, emotional, technical, and artistic challenges inherent in documentary filmmaking, especially in relation to trauma.
4. Relate psychoanalytic concepts to documentary films and more broadly narrative story-telling.

Karen Dougherty, MA, RP (CRPO), FIPA

Karen Dougherty, MA, RP (CRPO), FIPA is a Psychoanalyst and Registered Psychotherapist in private practice in Amaranth, Ontario, a filmmaker, a former producer in TVO’s Documentary Unit, and mental health consultant for film and television. She is a clinical supervisor who teaches at the TIP, ATPPP, the FPP, the Extension Program of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society. Member TPS&I.

Steven Silver, Filmmaker, TIP Candidate

Steven Silver, Filmmaker, TIP Candidate is a South African-Canadian entrepreneur, media executive, investor and a producer/director of film and television. Steven’s documentaries have won many awards including an International Emmy. Steven runs a private psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice in Toronto.