Billy the Kid

USA, 2007, 85 min

Directed By: Jennifer Venditti
Producers: Jennifer Venditti, Chiemi Karasawa
Executive Producers: Bob Alexander, Barnet Liberman, Lubov Azria
Cinematographers: Donald Cumming, Paris Kain
Editors: Michael Levine, Enat Sidi
Music: Christian Zucconi, Guy Blakeslee
Featuring: Billy P.

You’ll not soon forget Billy P., the remarkable 15-year-old subject of Jennifer Venditti’s engrossing verité portrait of life, love and growing up different in small-town Maine. At first, Billy seems like any other awkward teen into air guitar, professional wrestling and girls. Gradually, however, Billy and his mother reveal to Venditti’s empathetic camera a darker history of behavioral problems, institutionalization and medical treatments. Against such a background, that which initially seemed normal — choir practice, a first crush — becomes heroic, while Billy’s disarming humor and startling wisdom become all the more affecting. More ...

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