Get groundbreaking ALS documentary broadcast

WHAT WE'VE MANAGED SO FAR:

 

We’re three independent filmmakers who have together made a documentary, ‘Eat Your Catfish’, that tells a true story of the daily struggles with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called motor-neuron disease, MND, or Lou Gehrig's disease) for both patients and their caretakers, and in a way that has never been done before. This labor of love has taken us seven years, drawing on more than 900 hours of footage, and managed on a skeleton budget. It premiered to universal acclaim at the top-tier International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam this November, though our limited funding barely got us across that line.

 

WHY WE URGENTLY NEED YOUR HELP:

 

This high-profile premiere and the reviews that followed (see below) have drawn interest from broadcasters, but they all require a trailer and a more compact, 52-minute version. We need funds to cover remaining studio expenses and to afford another period of editing and studio work to create this version for television broadcasts so that ‘Eat Your Catfish’ can go beyond the festival circuit, reach a mass audience and make a real impact on the conversation about this ruthless disease.

 

OUR UNIQUE APPROACH TO THIS SUBJECT:

 

‘Eat Your Catfish’ is a project initiated by Noah Amir Arjomand, one of his mother Kathryn’s main caretakers, and is shot entirely from her point of view during her last years with ALS. The other filmmakers, Adam Isenberg and Senem Tüzen (whose previous films have screened at Venice and other top-tier festivals), shared Noah’s goal of making a film that centers the patient and reveals without flinching what it’s really like to live with ALS on a daily basis. “Eat Your Catfish’ does so without depending on testimony, interviews, outside experts, or any tale of a patient’s exceptional heroics or outsized achievements. This story stays right inside the family, day and night, warts and all.

 

WHY THIS PROJECT MATTERS AND NEEDS TO REACH A WIDER AUDIENCE:

This is a film that will make ALS patients and their caregivers feel seen, understood, and appreciated—because just surviving day-to-day battles with this disease is heroic enough. Just holding onto a marriage under such weight is enough of an achievement. In ‘Eat Your Catfish,’ the viewer feels almost as if they are in the body and mind of an ALS patient. From initial screenings, we see that this approach changes the way people think and talk about disability, chronic illness, and home caretaking. We need your help to make a TV-ready version of ‘Eat Your Catfish’ so it can reach a broad audience and have this impact on public understanding.

 

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

 

We need donations, large or small. If you cannot help financially, you can still join this effort by sharing this campaign on social media, with friends, and with family.

 

SOCIAL MEDIA & PRESS KIT:

 

For updates about screenings or to help spread the word, follow 'Eat Your Catfish' on Facebook , Twitter , or Instagram @EatYourCatfish. More info in the press kit.

 

REVIEWS SO FAR:

 

“Co-director Noah Arjomand chronicles his own mother's struggle with the degenerative disease to courageously intimate, brutally moving effect… modesty of scale shouldn’t prevent ‘Eat Your Catfish’ from making an outsize impact in the documentary circuit… an unusually unsentimental, everyday document of ALS, tender in the expressly painful manner of a fresh bruise.” --Guy Lodge, VARIETY (read the full review here)

 

“An astonishingly open, moving, funny and challenging insight into the world of a woman paralysed but with her mind intact, Eat Your Catfish is remarkable in portraying an intimate and powerful portrait of a family stretched to its very breaking point.” Mark Adams, BUSINESS DOC EUROPE (read the full review here)

 

“Rarely has a film about illness offered such a revealing look at what else breaks down besides the body.” Pauline Kleijer, DE VOLKSKRANT

 

“Crucially, the film gives Kathryn a platform to tell — and indeed show — her story, in her own unique way. Her lingering hope is that viewers don’t think she’s pathetic, but plucky. Painstakingly edited by Adam Isenberg and Senem Tüzen, this film grants her that wish.” – Nikki Baughan, SCREEN INTERNATIONAL (read the full review here)

 

THANK YOU!

 

Peace & strength to all who are fighting ALS. Thank you from the three of us!

 

Adam, Noah, and Senem

co-directors and co-producers