Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other
Synopsis
Thirty years after a chance encounter, Maggie and Joel, aged 75 and 84, are still very much in love. But their relationship is not without complications. Born in the hard-boiled Bronx, Joel Meyerowitz is a world-renowned photographer with major exhibitions and 40 books to his name. British-born Maggie Barrett is a talented but less recognised artist and writer. There is a knot of unease in their relationship, which is further strained when Maggie falls and breaks her leg and Joel must take on her caregiving. In the shadow of mortality, each with a long and dramatic life behind them, the hard truths of life together provoke in Maggie and Joel an attempt to find a shared inner peace while there is still time. With unique access to the couple's lives, directors Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet have created a profoundly moving film about living, creating and loving.
Official Selection CPH:DOX 2024 - World premiere
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2024
Details
- Year
- 2024
- Type of film
- Features
- Running time
- 100 min
- Director
-
Jacob Perlmutter, Manon Ouimet 1st Feature
- Producer
- Signe Byrge Sørensen, Jacob Perlmutter, Manon Ouimet
- Executive Producer
- Mandy Chang, Joslyn Barnes, Melissa O’Shaughnessy, James O’Shaughnessy and Janus Billeskov Jansen
- Editor
- Estephan Wagner, Josh Mallalieu
- Director of Photography
- Jacob Perlmutter
- Sound
- Henrik Garnov
- Composer
- Diogo Strausz
- Principal cast
- With contributions from: Maggie Barrett and Joel Meyerowitz
Categories
Production Status
Production Company
UK, Denmark, US co-production
Manon et Jacob Ltd (UK), Final Cut for Real (DK)
Manon et Jacob Ltd
4b Thyra GroveLondon
N12 8HD
Sales Company
Cinetic Media
26 Broadway, 14th FloorNew York
NY 10004
USA
Page updates
This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.
See also
You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

Director: Hannah Berryman
Year: 2024
A landmark feature documentary about astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command the Space Shuttle. Eileen’s incredible journey starts with her smalltown beginnings, sees her smash through many glass ceilings, and culminates in four dramatic space shuttle missions, the last being possibly the most dangerous and most important of them all. At its heart the film is the moving human drama of one family, where a mother’s extraordinary career takes us straight to the big philosophical question of what is the level of acceptable risk in human endeavour? This film celebrates Commander Collins’ trailblazing NASA career which opened the way for women to become spacecraft pilots and commanders, and proved a perfect riposte to a previous generation of male astronauts who thought there was no place for women to lead the way in space. Official Selection DOC NYC 2024 - World premiere Official Selection CPH:DOX 2025 - European premiere

Director: sister sylvester and Nadah El Shazly
Year: 2025
Constantinopoliad is an expanded documentary and installation that centers around the collective reading of a hand-made book. A response to the archive of the poet Constantine Cavafy, the story is inspired by the blank and torn out pages in “Constantinopoliad, an epic”, the journal the teenage Cavafy began when he and his family fled Alexandria; by lost and missing queer archives through time; and by the ghosts, both erotic and historical, that visit the older Cavafy in his poems.

Director: Gillian Mosely
Year: 2026
A year after 7 October 2023, a British American Jew sets out to find out why 75% of Jewish Israelis support the way the war is being fought in Gaza. The story is told using a combination of discussions and street interviews, AI-generated animation, archive and real-time actuality as the investigation builds towards its disturbing conclusion.