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One South: Portrait of a Psych Unit

Directors

Alexandra Shiva, Lindsey Megrue

Executive Producers

Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller

Producers

Lindsey Megrue, Alexandra Shiva

Co-Producer

Matt Gottesfeld

Editors

Ashley Moradipour, Toby Shimin

Cinematographer

Justin Zweifach

“One South” is an inpatient psychiatric unit at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Queens, NY, specializing in treating young adults. It may look more like a college dorm than a psychiatric hospital, but patients arrive every day in acute crisis. They are dealing with a variety of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and psychosis, and many have contemplated or attempted suicide. A team of doctors, social workers, and nurses work together to stabilize the patients and prepare them to return to the outside world, but time is limited, and there are many obstacles. The two-part film follows the trajectory of hospital admission–from intake through the ups and downs of treatment to discharge–as various patient and provider stories are blended to create a rich portrait of a unique place.

content warning: this film contains subject matter related to mental health and suicide.

Post-screening discussion with co-directors Alexandra Shiva and Lindsey Megrue, moderated by Aneri Pattani, Senior Correspondent, KFF Health News.

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Alexandra Shiva

Co-director, One South: Portrait of a Psych Unit

Alexandra Shiva is an award-winning filmmaker known for crafting intimate character-driven cinema verité documentaries. Her previous film, Each and Every Day, about youth mental health, premiered on MTV in 2021. In 2018, Alexandra released This Is Home, a portrait of four Syrian refugee families arriving in Baltimore, Maryland, and struggling to find their footing. It won the Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and a Columbia-duPont award. She produced and directed How to Dance in Ohio, which follows a group of autistic teenagers preparing for an iconic American rite of passage — a Spring Formal. The Peabody Award-winning film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015 and aired on HBO to great critical acclaim. A musical adaptation of How to Dance in Ohio opened on Broadway in 2023. Alexandra’s other film credits include Stagedoor and her directorial debut, Bombay Eunuch. Her most recent project, One South: Portrait of a Psych Unit, is about an inpatient program specializing in treating college students and will premiere on HBO in the summer of 2024. Alexandra is an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science member and the Director’s Guild of America. She is a graduate of Vassar College.

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Lindsey Megrue

Co-director, One South: Portrait of a Psych Unit

Lindsey Megrue is a director and creative producer who strives to make documentary films that explore the pivotal issues shaping our world from an intimate and nuanced perspective. She has been working in film for nearly two decades. Her work has been shown theatrically on HBO, EPIX, MTV, and PBS, as well as on the websites of The New York Times and The New Yorker. She produced This is Home, a feature-length film about Syrian refugees resettling in Baltimore, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary. She was a Field Producer for the Emmy-nominated series Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies. She has also directed for the highly-rated PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Other films include Each and Every Day, Koch, and eight episodes of the award-winning series American Experience. Lindsey’s current project, One South: Portrait of a Psych Unit, will premiere on HBO in the summer of 2024. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Documentary Producers Alliance, a 2017 Impact Partners Producing Fellow, and a graduate of Smith College.