An intimate, very visual exploration of the harrowing cycle of bipolar disorder

For Ellice Stevens, bipolar disorder is a constant, cyclical struggle that leaves her abruptly shifting between her ‘real’, rational self, her mania and her extreme depressive states. In her lowest periods, she’s unable to carry out even the most routine tasks, such as throwing away rubbish or picking up clothes off her floor. The London-based filmmaker Dorothy Allen-Pickard’s short The Mess uses interviews, disorienting figurative imagery and special effects to bring Stevens’s subjective experience of the complex and often debilitating disorder to life.