Heaven Is A Traffic Jam On The 405

A 2018 Oscar(®) winner for Best Documentary Short, this film is a portrait of Mindy Alper, a brilliant 56-year-old artist represented by one of Los Angeles’ top galleries. Her body of raw, emotional work reveals a lifetime of depression and mental disorder; she has suffered through electro shock therapy, multiple commitments to mental institutions and a 10-year period without speech. Her only consistent means of communicating has been to channel her hyper self-awareness into drawings and sculpture of powerful psychological clarity that eloquently express her emotional state. Through an examination of her work, interviews, reenactments, and the building of an eight and a half foot papier-mâché bust of her beloved psychiatrist, we learn how she has emerged from a life of darkness and isolation to one that includes love, trust, and support. The title of the film begs the question as to why the 405 freeway, the north/south highway that connects Los Angeles to its northern suburbs and statistically the busiest and most universally loathed highway in the world, would be anyone's idea of heaven. It is a quote from Ms. Alper, and expresses the extent to which she sees life differently from most.