A BAFTA-nominated documentary about heroin addiction, a hand-painted animation described by Stephen Fry as "simply magnificent", and a US video artwork exploring a father's response to his daughter's drug-related death will be screened together at Stockport Plaza this month.
The three short films will be screened together for the first time at Counter Narratives on 29 September, the closing event of Recoverist Month, an annual programme curated by arts organisation Portraits of Recovery.
The screening brings together three very different perspectives on substance use, loss and recovery β from a woman confronting the death of the mother she never knew, to an artist whose life has been consumed by alcohol, and a father who chooses compassion over punishment after losing his daughter to drugs.
The first film, Milk (2024), offers a "raw and intimate" exploration of maternal loss and heroin use. Director Miranda Stern sets out to understand her mother, who died from an overdose when Stern was just five months old, while confronting her own recovery from heroin addiction and contemplating future motherhood.
Just under 30 minutes long, the film combines digital, Super8, 16mm and VHS footage, leaving the scars and imperfections of its different formats visible in a process compared to the Japanese art of kintsugi.
Small Hours: A Portrait of Alcoholism (2025), meanwhile, takes an entirely different visual approach.
Narrated by actor Robert Bathurst (Downton Abbey, Cold Feet, Toast of London), the film is an oil-paint-on-glass animation created over eight years by Royal College of Art graduate Oscar Wyndham Lewis. In more than 5,000 individually painted images, it tells the story of a reclusive artist whose life has been hollowed out by alcohol addiction.
After seeing the film, Stephen Fry sent Wyndham Lewis a personal message describing it as "astonishing" and "simply magnificent".
The film premiered in Manchester during last year's Recoverist Month and was recently nominated for Best Animation at the Raindance Film Festival.
The third work, There Is No One What Will Take Care of You (2023), comes from US filmmaker Dina Fiasconaro and will receive its UK premiere at Counter Narratives.
The split-screen video artwork tells the true story of a Baltimore father following the death of his daughter from drugs supplied by a friend. With the friend facing a potential 50-year prison sentence, the father chose to support his recovery and release rather than pursue retribution.
Fiasconaro said she hopes the work can "humanise people with substance use disorder", encouraging empathy and healing while questioning punitive approaches to drug use.
Together, the three works challenge familiar ideas about addiction and recovery, exploring what happens when substance use is viewed through the experiences of those living with its consequences rather than through stereotypes.
Dominic Pillai, curator of social engagement at Portraits of Recovery, said:
"Collectively, the programme asks what moving image can make possible when recovery is approached not as a resolved outcome, but as a lived process shaped by memory, ambiguity and social connection.
"The three short films do not offer art as remedy; instead, they invite a shared encounter with the visual language, ruptures and repetitions by which recovery is lived and re-imagined."
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion exploring the representation of addiction, recovery and mental health through moving image.
Recoverist Month takes place every September to mark International Recovery Month, bringing artists, communities and audiences together through exhibitions, performances and creative events exploring substance use and recovery.
Counter Narratives
29 September 2026 6β8pm
Stockport Plaza, Mersey Square, Stockport SK1 1SP
Tickets: Β£2.50 Eventbrite
