Bipolar disorder can be one of the most widely mythed mood disorders and can certainly be difficult to understand.

However, the world of movies and documentaries has several examples that help to understand what this kind of mood and behavioral problems are . They can be a good way to learn how bipolarity arises and how it is presented through the actions of the person who experiences it.

Films and documentaries on bipolarity

Below you can see a list of documentaries and films about Bipolar Disorder , which capture different facets of its symptom picture. They are not ordered by quality or age.

1. Biutiful

A Mexican and Spanish production directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Javier Bardem. In it the relationship of a young man with death is narrated with a melancholic and subtle tone .

2. Crazy love

This film starring Drew Barrymore and Chris O’Donell tells the romantic relationship between two young people, marked by the emotional ups and downs typical of Bipolar Disorder and the way they flee from family and mental health institutions.

3. The Flying Scotsman

A review of the story of Graeme Obree, a well-known Scottish cyclist who has Bipolar Disorder and, despite the problems this entails, managed to become an elite sportsman.

4. Mr Jones

One of the clearest descriptions of Bipolar Disorder that can be found in a film , thanks to the work of Richard Gere. Here, he depicts a man with strong emotional ups and downs and sudden mood swings who maintains a complex relationship with his psychiatrist (Lena Olin).

5. Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive

A television documentary divided into two parts, about the way in which this English comedian, writer and actor lives his mental disorder . This, in particular, is a mood disorder known as cyclothymia, which is a mild form of Bipolar Disorder.

6. Van Gogh: painted with words

A docudrama about the life of the famous Dutch painter, embodied here by the famous actor Benedict Cumberbach . The way Van Gogh’s phases of tormented life are presented is a good description of the symptoms of Bipolar Disorder.

7. The Hours

A film structured through 3 different periods and 3 different women who are the protagonists of each of them and who, in some way, are united by the work of the writer Virginia Woolf.

8. Normal Life

Like other films about Bipolar Disorder such as Mad Love, this one focuses on the relationship of two people, one of whom experiences bipolarity . In this case it is about a policeman and a young woman whose mental stability is compromised.

9. Wilbur wants to kill himself

Wilbur is a man who, at first glance, seems not to lack charm or humor. However, the idea of committing suicide is gaining more and more strength in his life , the product of a pessimism that haunts him wherever he goes.

10. Michael Clayton

It is not a film about Bipolar Disorder per se, but one of the characters in it has this mood disorder . This is one of the lawyers, Arthur Edens.

11. Blue Sky

This film talks about a marriage formed by a woman with mental instability that is evolving into depression (Jessica Lange) and a soldier in the U.S. army who, in addition to suffering strong pressures in his job, is increasingly socially isolated.

12. The bright side of things

A story that explores the personal side of the person who experiences this disorder in the flesh. Two people with relationship problems meet and, without realizing it, see that despite being very different the experiences they have had to go through, they find themselves in adversity.

13. Two worlds

A metaphor for the unstable nature of people with bipolarity.

14. A por todas

This film, shot in the 1980s, reflects the stigma of the disorder and adds to it the doses of humanity that patients had to squeeze in order to cope with a hostile environment .