Movie
D Is for Distance
Tropes in this movie
The System Is Rigged
mediumThe NHS, an institution meant to protect the family, is depicted as rigidly bureaucratic and offering little help for Louis's condition. The family must bypass official channels entirely, seeking alternative treatments in Rotterdam. Working within the system fails, and meaningful progress comes only from operating outside it.
About this trope: Institutions meant to protect people — governments, corporations, law enforcement, the justice system — are depicted as corrupt, incompetent, or actively harmful. Heroes must work outside official channels.
Humans Never Give Up
highLouis faces a rare, seemingly incurable epilepsy that erases his memories and leaves him severely debilitated — objectively hopeless circumstances. The family refuses to surrender, persistently searching for treatment despite institutional failure. Louis's ability to undertake the Sápmi journey and his triumph against adversity are framed as a beacon of hope. Hope persists when medical logic says it shouldn't.
About this trope: Facing impossible odds, humans endure, adapt, and find reasons to keep going. Resilience and refusal to surrender is humanity's defining and most admirable trait.
Full plot (spoilers)
D Is for Distance is a documentary essay-film directed by Christopher Petit and Emma Matthews about their son Louis, who at age 12 was struck by a rare and seemingly incurable form of epilepsy that erased his childhood memories and left him severely debilitated. The film uses a montage of contemporary family and travel footage, home videos, and archival clips from early cinema history, narrated in the third person by actress Jodhi May. The main narrative thread follows a trip that Petit and Louis took to Sápmi (northern Scandinavia) to explore its unspoiled countryside — the first such journey in years that Louis was well enough to undertake. Interwoven with this personal story is material from Petit's abandoned project linking American author William S. Burroughs with former CIA chief James Angleton, which serves as a prism to explore Cold War paranoia, the LSD-driven MKUltra mind-control experiments, and shifting medical understandings of epilepsy. The film portrays the family's struggles navigating the rigid bureaucracy of the NHS, which offered little help, and their search for alternative treatment options including in Rotterdam. Louis's own artwork — rich visual depictions of his visionary condition — is incorporated alongside film clips and sound textures. The documentary operates simultaneously on the microcosm of personal pain and the macrocosm of societal decline in an age of post-truth, ultimately functioning as a beacon of hope as Louis triumphs against adversity.
Sources: IMDb, IFFR, Loud and Clear Reviews, BFI, Viennale, FirstShowing.net