Swiss filmmaker Sabine Gisiger’s Yalom’s Cure, a biography of one of the most influential psychiatrists living today, will have it’s premiere on March 11, 2016 at the Laemmle Theaters in L.A.
American Irvin D. Yalom is a bestselling author and world-renowned psychiatrist who has been an innovator in new methods of mental health practice and has changed the lives of the millions who have read his many books.
This documentary takes us into Yalom’s personal life and offers more than a typical biography: together with Dr. Yalom we embark on an existential journey through the many layers of the human mind, navigating the depths and shallows of our psyche.
Along the way we learn about Yalom’s groundbreaking work in the development of the field of psychotherapy, and listen as he reveals some of his most fundamental insights and wisdom.
Dr. Yalom’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide and critics describe him as “mind-bending,” “inspiring,” “haunting,” and “life-changing.” He is the author of the bestsellers The Schopenhauer Cure, Lying on the Couch, Love’s Executioner and When Nietzsche Wept as well as the author of several classic textbooks and teaching novels on psychotherapy. His new book Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy was released in 2015. In his novels and stories, which he calls “teaching narratives,” he combines psychotherapeutic experience, philosophy, and historical research with enthralling, profound stories. The message is always the same: It is worth trying to know yourself and to break old patterns.
Yalom says that it is a question of social conditions, personal character and financial means that determine whether someone enters into therapy. The suffering in life, however, is universal. We all repeatedly face the question of who are we, the question of what actually drives and motivates us, the question of what is the meaning of it all.
About the Filmmaker
Sabine Gisiger was born in 1959 in Zurich. She studied history in Zurich and Pisa, and graduated in 1988. She wrote her final dissertation on the history of the housemaid. In 1989 she trained as a TV journalist with Swiss television and then worked for many years as a reporter at home and abroad. Gisiger has been making documentaries as a freelance director since 1990.
In 2000 her documentary DO IT, directed with Marcel Zwingli, won the film award 2001 for the Best Swiss documentary. She had further success with her films GAMBIT in 2005 and GURU – Bhagwan, His Secretary & His Bodyguard (with Beat Häner) in 2010, which were both nominated for the Swiss Film Award.
