When Maya Kowalski was 10 years old, the once-vibrant Florida youngster started exhibiting a worrying array of ailments: Her feet began cramping and curling inward, she couldn’t stop coughing, headaches nearly incapacitated her, and lesions appeared on her limbs. Her doting parents, Jack and Beata, were desperate for not even a cure but simply a diagnosis of what was ailing their beloved firstborn. For Beata, a Polish immigrant and nurse known for her direct nature, it was yet another challenge to overcome, another medical mystery to unravel.

What would unfold over the next few years was a nightmare even the always-prepared Beata couldn’t possibly predict, a complicated story with a heartbreaking — and wholly unfinished — conclusion that should terrify everyone. First-time feature filmmaker Henry Roosevelt attempts to unpack what happened to the Kowalskis (and, as the film eventually alleges, what has happened to many other American families) in the documentary “Take Care of Maya,” a wrenching and ultimately incomplete look at an unbelievable true story.

If the shades of this story — sick kid, dedicated mom, a family tale with unexpectedly wide implications — sounds familiar, perhaps you’ve already read Dyan Neary’s excellent 2022 article in The Cut or one of Daphne Chen’s pieces from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and know where this story ends. And while Roosevelt doesn’t try to obscure the tragedy that consumes the documentary’s final act, the pains with which the filmmaker goes to unspool his film in a linear fashion, all the better to attempt to find the truth in a complex story, are a wise choice.

Less effective are the various perspectives Roosevelt dips in and out of while telling that story. What happened to Maya and Beata has (and will likely only continue to) inspire all kinds of controversy, with everything from Maya’s eventual diagnosis and the treatment the Kowalskis pursued to the actions of a local hospital and the Pinellas County child-protection team up for debate, but Roosevelt’s film wavers between taking a clear stance on any of the issues at hand.

Not that that’s necessary for a documentary — where, typically, objectivity would rule — but Roosevelt attempts to have things both ways, diving deep into the lives of the Kowalskis while also including surveillance footage from Maya’s many hospital stays that seems to slyly refute the family’s own experience. That means it’s up to viewers to draw their own conclusions, but “Take Care of Maya” doesn’t provide nearly enough information to allow for that. What it does provide, however, is heartbreaking and infuriating, a document of a bizarre tragedy that seems destined to never get full closure for anyone involved.

The facts, as slippery as that term may be in this instance, are as follows and are neatly laid out in Roosevelt’s film: After Maya started experiencing her ailments, few doctors could pinpoint a diagnosis until Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick offered one that came complete with a controversial “cure.” Kirkpatrick alleged that Maya had CRPS (“complex regional pain syndrome”), a rare form of chronic pain that tends to afflict young girls most often and is, much like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, misunderstood often to the point of derision. To heal Maya, Kirkpatrick started her on a ketamine regime, eventually ending with a dose so intense that it was meant to put her into a five-day coma.

When Maya woke up, she felt better until she didn’t. Months after her coma, Beata and Jack took her to a local hospital for treatment, where the various doctors, nurses, and social workers eventually concluded that Maya was not sick and that meticulous and direct Beata was actually the ailing one, suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy (hello, “The Act”). For nearly three months, Maya stayed in the hospital — where her insurance company was, ironically, billed for her CRPS treatment — while her family, especially Beata, were kept away from her and ruthlessly investigated by the state of Florida.

Roosevelt has a wealth of material to work with in telling this story, thanks to Beata’s detailed notes and audio recordings, plus a number of interviews with various talking heads and even deposition material from the eventual lawsuits that are skin-crawling in about five different ways. At times, “Take Care of Maya” feels almost too personal, as Roosevelt follows the Kowalskis during some of their darkest days, burrowing inside a broken family and only being able to show us the pieces.

That sense of a story rendered incomplete, of answers we may never fully know, is at the heart of the Kowalskis’ story, but Roosevelt’s film is unable to square that with the constraints and demands of a feature film. Just as one story comes to a horrible close, others begin to spin outward, none of them able to find any sense of closure or completion, just more pain, no cure.

Grade: B-

“Take Care of Maya” premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. It will start streaming on Netflix on Monday, June 19.

Some three decades after one of the biggest scandals in the history of pop music, Milli Vanilli still commands a certain fascination for those who lived through the 1980s. Their debut album went six times platinum and they won the Best New Artist Grammy in 1990, but later that year Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus, the faces of the group, had to do a mea culpa because they had not actually sung on the album.  

Luke Korem’s documentary, “Milli Vanilli,” which receives its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival and will stream on Paramount+ in the fall, is well-researched and polished, even if it’s essentially a feature-length episode of “Behind the Music.”   

The movie traces the story as far back as their humble beginnings. Pilatus, born in Germany to an American soldier and a strip dancer, lived in an orphanage until age 4. Morvan, from a broken family, moved at 18 from Paris to Munich, where he was briefly homeless. As two of the very few Black people there at the time, they became fast friends. They generated some buzz throwing parties, working as back-up dancers on TV shows and modeling. Soon they were introduced to producer Frank Farian and traveled to Frankfurt. They signed a multi-album contract without reading the fine print and did not realize Farian had another plan for them. The rest is history.  

In addition to Morvan, the documentary features interviews with the group’s actual vocalists — Brad Howell, Charles Shaw, Linda Rocco and Jodie Rocco — as well as Farian’s secretary, Ingrid Segieth, and Arista Records’ staff members. Notably absent is Farian himself and Clive Davis, Arista’s founder, seen only in archival interviews, as well as Pilatus and vocalist John Davis, both now dead.

Of course, almost everyone tries to evade responsibility for the calamity. Morvan says they had no choice but to go along due to their debt to Farian, a claim Segieth refutes. There are even discrepancies within Arista. Mitchell Cohen, artist and repertoire, denies any direct knowledge at the time, but Ken Levy, senior vice president, says Davis and others were fully aware. These conflicting accounts assure the documentary’s objectivity. The truth is clearly somewhere in between. 

The archival footage, including some of their pre-fame TV appearances in Germany, appears to be exhaustively culled and restored. The additional interviewees, such as VJ “Downtown” Julie Brown, producer Timbaland, and various music journalists help supply important context. 

Korem’s sympathies seem to be with Morvan and Pilatus, highlighting Brown’s calling them “scapegoats” in the opening intro. Still, success did go to Morvan and Pilatus’ heads, as Cohen points out, and they were arrogant and obnoxious. Armed with their phenomenal success with the first album, they honestly thought they could play hardball with Farian. They were wrong. 

Interviewees cast Farian as the real villain, citing his history of exploiting Black artists, including the group Boney M. He could have developed Morvan and Pilatus and provided them with voice lessons, but he was just trying to use their likeness to make a quick buck. In fact, after Farian fired them, he assembled The Real Milli Vanilli vocalists again, along with others who did not sing on the first record. Privately, Morvan and Pilatus wrestled with imposter syndrome. Shaw likewise struggled with not getting his due for an enormously successful record. As Farian and Arista made out like bandits, the Black artists in front of and behind the curtain suffered from the mental toll it took on them. 

Interviewees seem to agree in unison that Milli Vanilli’s Grammy win ultimately led to their demise. What’s unsaid here by those directly involved and the commentators featured is what it would have taken to keep up the charade. Do they think this kind of racket is still going on? Has the industry simply gotten better at crafting illusions? 

The documentary concludes that Milli Vanilli did not harm anyone, and that the scandal should not have cost Pilatus his life. It ends with Morvan performing “Blame It on the Rain” competently at an outdoor festival. He clearly has worked hard on his singing and accent. Maybe this is how it should have been from the start. 

If you’ve been left in a gaping void by the end of Succession, don’t despair. The Hollywood Reporter has another 11 series to watch for those desperate for a dysfunctional family drama fix. The below titles (along with where you can stream them) include more epic siblings battles, snarky dinner table banter and unpredictable plot twists. Dive into these series for the thrill of family backstabbing, corporate double-dealing or simply for the maladjusted — and wealthy and/or powerful — bringing out the worst in one another, typically (except for a few aspirational exceptions).

Giddy up and go west with Paramount Network’s Yellowstone (which streams on Peacock) because similar to the media power hungry Roys in Succession, the Dutton dynasty saga floats on its own land-grabbing soap suds. And it also can be perceived as ending too soon, with the megahit series wrapping up with the forthcoming return of season five (after reported off-screen negotiation drama). Swap New York for Montana where John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, is the moody patriarch and baron of an unlikeable family running the Yellowstone cattle and horse ranch. They play in a corrupt world of greedy politicians, oil and lumber giants. Taylor Sheridan’s modern West-focused hit also has ambitious sons, Wes Bentley as Jamie and Luke Grimes as Kayce, and a lone daughter yearning for daddy’s approval with Kelly Reilly’s Beth.

Mad Men (AMC+, Amazon Freevee)

If you liked Succession for its alpha males wielding power in a faltering patriarchy, head over to AMC’s Mad Men. Set in in a 1960-era Madison Avenue ad agency, it’s more than your typical workplace drama. Led by Jon Hamm as Don Draper, Mad Men is filled with miscreant ad men too busy smoking, drinking and having affairs to enjoy what success, money and happiness they derive from their advertising campaigns. And they flounder amid incessant change in the air, from turbulent 1960s America that will have younger characters — especially career-driven women of Elisabeth Moss’s Peggy and Christina Hendricks as Joan — rise as older characters fall across the seven-season drama.

The cat-and-mouse finance drama, like Succession, is set in Manhattan and mostly centers on Paul Giamatti’s Chuck Rhoades and Damian Lewis’ hedge fund billionaire Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, as emotionally tortured antiheroes forever circling one another with bluster and machismo. Eventually the stakes go from Wall Street to personal insecurities, identity hangups and a mutual passion for revenge. Headed to a seventh season with Axe’s return (after Lewis left the series), the Showtime drama has enough shifting alliances and loyalties, and wounded and betrayed egos to captivate, as did the Roys with their dysfunctional family struggles.

Paramount+’s The Good Fight, a spinoff of CBS’ long-running and beloved The Good Wife series, has Christine Baranski as Chicago lawyer Diane Lockhart staring down the end of the world with one legal case after another. Trump-era immigration policy, the #MeToo movement, climate change and other issues ripped from the headlines are fodder for the six-season drama built around a prestigious Black law firm that reflects current times.

The White Lotus is resort country. And if you like the way Succession skewered the privilege of terrible rich people doing terrible things, turn to the HBO series that winds the satirical crank on the insufferable guests and staff of a swanky resort in golden-hued Hawaii in season one, and sun-splashed Sicily in the second cycle of the anthology. There’s endless soapy misadventures for iconic characters like Jennifer Coolidge playing the wild and wealthy Tanya, and Connie Britton as frazzled tech boss Nicole Mossbacher. The White Lotus is headed to a third season in Thailand.

With its cutthroat family of three sons (including the embattled Jussie Smollett) and an embittered wife battling to inherit a diamond-encrusted business built by terminally ill music mogul Lucious Lyon, played by Terrence Howard, you’ve got Succession set to a hip hop soundtrack. And to Lee Daniels’ Shakespearean tale of Cookie Lyon, played by Taraji P. Henson. As the six-season Fox drama gets underway, she’s released from prison and demanding her share of a lucrative pie after doing 17 years for a crime that allowed Lyon the financing to launch his company. What could go wrong as the Lyons battle for supremacy?

After Succession cuts to black, it’s time for The Sopranos, the Godfather of dysfunctional family dramas. Between panic attacks that send him to a shrink, troubled New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini, juggles his mob family and his own broken family. It’s that vulnerability from living a two-faced life as a sturdy family man and a ruthless mafia don that fuels most every twist and turn across six seasons as Tony clings to his throne in showrunner David Chase’s opus drama.

You thought Logan Roy played dirty: Enter Francis Underwood, the ruthless political boss scheming his way to the top and played by disgraced actor Kevin Spacey in the Washington D.C.-set thriller House of Cards. As he wheels and deals, his reptilian wife Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) is at first the ideal political backer as his dirty deeds pile up. There’s nothing inviting about these political operators as the Underwoods bulldoze rivals, except the engrossing soapy drama they star in (which wrapped after six seasons after Spacey’s exit).

Here’s another inside-a-fictional White House drama, only The West Wing has hopeful Oval Office staff making the U.S. leader, who is in this case Martin Sheen as hero-President Josiah Bartlet, look, well, presidential. Sure, it’s a fantasy of the nation’s capital on network TV, but the American lawmakers and White House staff are worth getting excited over in the watershed workplace drama that also stars Rob Lowe, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford and John Spencer. Sportsnight producers Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme are behind the snappy dialogue (including the walk-and-talk camera shots) and rapid-fire action for the first four seasons, to be then replaced by ER’s John Wells for the final three.  

If you thought opening the Roy family closet wouldn’t end well, watch Netflix’s dark Bloodline drama about the Florida Keys’ Rayburn family forced to face its own lies and secrecy when Danny, the estranged black sheep son played by Ben Mendelsohn, returns home. “Bad things follow you around, don’t they?” his dad and family patriarch (Sam Shepard) tells Danny in season one. They certainly do. That leads his siblings — John (Kevin Chandler), Meg (Linda Cardellini) and Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz) — to confront their deceptions as the audience is left asking when will the backstabbers, double-dealers and worse in the Rayburn family inn will finally come clean with the truth across three seasons.

If you want more rich bratty kids struggling for control of the family business, HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones comedy from Danny McBride is our final destination. This time, tensions and struggles spawned by genes has a family of evangelical preachers battling over a mega-church, led by Patriarch Eli Gemstone (John Goodman). McBride plays Jesse, the eldest son in incessant rivalry with siblings Kelvin (Adam DeVine) and Judy (Edi Patterson), which is set to return for a forthcoming third season.