The Film

The Animated Mind of Oliver Sacks is a feature length documentary film featuring a newly uncovered trove of personal audio and video tapes recorded by Dr. Oliver Sacks.  The film combines this archive with the filmmaker’s own interviews with Oliver, animation, and creative new filming to create an intimate journey into the fantastical mind and ground-breaking work of one of the most creative and influential thinkers of our time and the man who helped found the modern neurodiversity movement.

This is an immersive documentary that tells the story of Dr. Oliver Sacks’ early career as an iconoclastic young neurologist in NYC. Personal crises and professional achievements in the 1960-70s defined Oliver and were critical to his development as a compassionate neurologist who gained worldwide renown in the 1980s. He is a man whose feelings of being an outsider parallel the experiences of his own patients, who have long been forgotten by society.  Oliver’s dedicated work as their neurologist gives these patients a feeling of being seen and acknowledged by the world. This act of witnessing helps Oliver to gradually open himself to connection, self-acceptance and love.

This film creates space for the audience to reflect, just as Oliver did, on our own fragility as we live in an uncertain world—and to embrace the knowledge that each of us is unique.