Documentary is a nightmare

“Unnatural and Accidental”:  Remembering the Lost Women of Vancouver[S]ome nightmares have their basis in reality. Which makes them even more horrifying.

Carl Bessai’s film, Unnatural and Accidental, is a dream that quickly thrusts you into a nightmare. Adapted from the play by Marie Clements, the story is ripped from the obituaries: the deaths of 10 Aboriginal women during the 80’s and 90’s from acute alcohol poisoning. Living on the margins of society, each of the victims subsisted in the Vancouver’s skid row, either as prostitutes, alcoholics or both. Their deaths were assumed to be the result of their self-destructive excesses. Thing was, it was anything but—a White barber was later convicted in their murders.