Walk Away Renee (2011) English · DVD

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Picking up where his trailblazing and internationally celebrated first-person debut film Tarnation left off, director Jonathan Caouette returns with Walk Away Renee, a bold, brave, and emotionally potent documentary reverie. Caouette embarks on a road trip to move his mentally ill mother Renee from Texas to New York, a journey that both tightens and tests their familial bond. As they tackle the numerous roadblocks along their way, we get glimpses into moments from their past, lending insight into their anything-but-ordinary mother/son relationship.

While Renee fights to maintain a grip on reality, Jonathan is faced with impossible decisions that pit sanity against mortality, familial devotion and personal survival.

Through candid home movies, split-screen verite, musical montage, hallucinatory psychedelia, and dramas both actual and imagined, Walk Away Renee raises questions about love, sacrifice, and the slippery instability of consciousness.