Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other

The complex relationship between two married artists is laid bare in this searing and joyful portrait of love and creativity in autumn.

Joel Meyerowitz is an internationally feted street and landscape photographer; his wife Maggie Barrett is a novelist and painter who has struggled to achieve recognition for her work. At 84 and 75, respectively, and having been together for a quarter of a century, the pair look forward to settling into old age in comfort in Tuscany. But when Barrett injures herself in a fall, the couple’s dynamic and living arrangements alter significantly, and long-buried resentments soon come bubbling to the surface.

Receiving CPH:DOX’s Dox:Award Special Mention, Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter’s film is a tender, at times funny, other times painfully candid study of the realities behind the romantic ideal of growing old together. Shooting over the course of a year, the directors lived in close quarters with Barrett and Meyerowitz and captured how their changing dynamic gave expression to more profound phenomena such as devotion, identity and creativity itself. Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other intimately – and inventively – observes the couple as they alternately draw together and pull apart, capturing the universe unto itself that is a long-term relationship.

“A triumph of documentary trust and access … So natural and effortlessly realised that you sometimes forget that Maggie and Joel know they’re being documented.” – In Review