Does being creative involve a risk of madness or is madness a prerequisite for creativity? Cecily Brennan’s unusual documentary addresses the long-held public belief in a connection between madness and artistic creativity. The documentary combines a dramatised section with interviews with artists, researchers and academics. These interwoven strands contrast the chaos and torment of mental collapse with the careful rationality of psychiatric research and the views of working artists. Over the course of the documentary the film-maker compares the intellectual and measured observations of the experts, their words controlled and thought through, with a description of the descent into chaos and madness of a young artist, played by Irish actor Marty Rea, ending in overwhelming depression and stasis. The interviewees include Dr Simon Kyaga from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Professor Patricia Waugh of Durham University, the playwright Frank McGuiness and the poet Paul Muldoon. Does society need to see its artists as outsiders?