
The Unspooling Mind
Dementia affects an estimated 44 million people worldwide, and this 16x9 report follows families deciding what to do when a parent or spouse can no longer be left alone. Outside Amsterdam, in the medieval village of Weesp, 152 people with severe dementia live inside a walled community built to look like an ordinary town, with a supermarket, a hairdresser, and staff posing as neighbors; there is one way in and one way out, and residents stay until they die. Five time zones away, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, European families are sending relatives to private homes run without locks or fences, part of what the industry calls the "granny export," now worth close to four billion dollars a year in Thai medical tourism. Back in Canada, Global National anchor Dawna Friesen speaks on camera about her own family's experience with the disease. The film moves between these three settings without arguing for one model of care over another, letting the cost, the guilt, and the relief each family describes speak for the difficulty of the decision.