‘Our American Family’ Shows Addiction Struggle Of One Philly Family – Deadline

More than 91,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2020, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a federal agency.

Those staggering numbers loom over the documentary Our American Family, an intimate look at a Philadelphia family with a daughter, Nicole, in grave danger of becoming one of those casualties. The film directed by Hallee Adelman and Sean King O’Grady screened Tuesday night as part of Deadline’s virtual event series For the Love of Docs.

At one point in the film, Nicole speaks of being “Narcanned six times,” referring to the medication Narcan that is used to revive people suffering a potentially fatal opioid overdose.

“It was just showing you how much addiction was in their tissues, how much this disease had lived within their family and affected them so deeply that [Narcan] became a verb, in a sense,” Adelman observed during a panel discussion after the screening. Before the documentary got underway, “[Nicole] was at the time overdosing about four times a year and had been to 17 treatment centers.”

Our American Family sprang from a friendship between Adelman and Nicole’s mother, Linda. They live in the same area of Philadelphia and had become acquainted through yoga, which both of them taught in studios. Years into their friendship, Adelman learned the severity of what Linda’s daughter was experiencing and the idea of making a documentary was born. Linda, her children Nicole, Chris and Stephen and Linda’s husband Bryan – stepdad to the kids – all agreed to be part of it.

“Nicole really wanted to help people,” Adelman said. “Her family was at a point where they just wanted to make sure their journey wasn’t in vain… The one thing we were certain about is that no matter what, we were going to have a story that showed people how hard families are working, how hard families touched by addiction are fighting, and how much strength that they have… I think we were all guided by [the family’s] mission of saying, let’s help people and let’s put the strength forward.”

When Adelman and O’Grady began filming it appeared Nicole, a young mother herself, might be turning a corner.

“Nicole was, I think, three weeks clean at the time when we first met her. And a whole different set of challenges begins then,” O’Grady said. “It was also that sense of like, okay, there’s struggles here, but everything’s on the right path. And being able to tell that story and see that story unfold over the course of the first year and Nicole’s long-term sobriety was just incredible.”

The filmmakers captured complex family dynamics – Nicole’s guilt over not being able to raise her daughter by herself; Linda’s sense of guilt that she had failed Nicole; one of Nicole’s brother’s openly doubting her ability to stay clean, while overlooking his own addictive behavior, and the other sibling – with no addiction struggle of his own – feeling overlooked because he wasn’t going through a life crisis.

“Sean and I share the same sensibility along with Joel [Plotch] and James [Carroll], our editors,” Adelman said, “of wanting to make sure that people could experience what the family experienced to move beyond that kind of fly on the wall feeling to more of an immersive feeling.”

O’Grady remembered feeling struck by the family’s openness, despite their struggles.

“From the minute that myself and the rest of our team set our foot on the ground and in the family’s house, we were just so welcomed,” O’Grady said. “It just felt like we were extended members of their family. And I think that without that, without them being so inviting of us into their lives, this just wouldn’t have happened. And, so, from the minute we met them, it felt like a real honor and a duty to be telling their story.”

Watch the conversation in the video above. Our virtual event series For the Love of Docs is sponsored by National Geographic.