Through personal stories, Olga Lvoff’s award-winning documentary Busy Inside delves deeply into Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) – formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, a condition that fascinates and puzzles modern psychiatry.
Karen Marshall is a respected therapist who treats patients with DID – the condition of having multiple personalities often resulting from child abuse. Among her patients is Marshay, a biracial musician, who sometimes struggles to believe that she really has DID. Marshay works with Karen to overcome her painful childhood memories, embrace her multiple personalities and find peace. But, Karen is still haunted by her own past, juggling seventeen of her own alter egos. Busy Inside works to return dignity to those with DID and bring better understanding of it through an honest portrayal of people who live with it every day and giving audiences a direct window into their inner world.
On March 16, Busy Inside will have its broadcast premiere as part of America ReFramed on public television’s WORLD Channel. America ReFramed broadcasts on WORLD Channel every Tuesday at 8/7c (check local listings at worldchannel.org/schedule). Episodes of America ReFramed can also be found on satellite TV during the week via Link TV (Direct TV channel 375 & Dish Network channel 9410). Busy Inside will also stream online upon premiere at worldchannel.org, amdoc.org, and on all station-branded PBS platforms.
Busy Inside had its World Premiere, at Moscow International Film Festival 2019 , and went on to screen at DOC NYC Film Festival 2019; Hamptons Doc Fest 2019; BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival 2020 and Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival 2019 where the film won the Audience Award for Best Feature.
Director Olga Lvoff: ” I want viewers to reflect upon their own identity when watching the film. When I first learned about DID, I was puzzled, thinking: is my identity a function of my brain, a social mask, or an illusion? Analyzing my behavior at work, at home, or at parties, I accepted that to a degree, my identity was a convention that altered depending on the occasion. At some point, I asked myself: how different are we from those with multiple personalities? As Pirandello wrote in his marvelous essay on humor and human nature: “What if we have within ourselves four souls fighting among themselves […]? Our consciousness adapts itself according to whichever dominates, and we hold as valid and sincere a false interpretation of our real interior being […]” Yes, these are terrifying revelations, but eventually, if you go all the way through in your self-exploration, you get to appreciate your life – any life, really – much more so. Likewise, I want viewers to question their own identity so that they’d have this therapeutic, cathartic experience.”
Director/Editor Olga Lvoff is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a member of The European Film Academy. Her feature documentary BUSY INSIDE is scheduled to air on WORLD Channel’s America ReFramed on March 16, 2021. It premiered at Moscow International Film Festival and won the Audience Award for the Best Feature at Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival in 2019. It was theatrically released in over 30 theaters in Russia: in a few theaters the release lasted for over 3 months. Olga’s previous full-length documentary film, “When People Die They Sing Songs,” was broadcast on NHK (Japan), theatrically released in Russia (Documentary Film Center in Moscow), participated in festivals around the world including DOC NYC (New York) and Message to Man (St.-Petersburg). It was nominated for a Student Oscar in 2014 and won the CINE Golden Eagle Award. The film was featured in The New York Times in 2015. Olga’s editing work has been shown at Tribeca Film Festival and Lincoln Center. Olga leads film workshops in Columbia University and Hunter College in New York. She received an MFA in Social Documentary from the School of Visual Arts in 2013. Olga splits her time between New York and Moscow.