Category: Featured

Paolo Genovese’s Afterlife Voyage: “The First Day of My Life”

TORONTO – A 2006 Documentary titled “The Bridge” shot 10,000 hours of footage capturing suicides off of the Golden Gate Bridge. After watching this, Italian Author and Director Paolo Genovese became fascinated with what the suicide survivors confessed in interviews. “All of them, in seven seconds, which is how long it takes [from the Golden Gate Bridge] to hit the water, had repented. These seven seconds fascinated me. How can a lifelong decision so stratified or unavoidable or incredible, be overturned in just seven seconds? I wondered about when you hit rock bottom and when there is nothing left to do, what things can lead you to change your mind?”. The questions raised by the controversial documentary became the seed for Genovese’s book “The First Day of My Life” and it’s eventual film adaptation in 2023.