STEPHEN A film by Melanie Manchot - Film Screening and Q&A

📅 Thursday 12 March 2026

⏰ 6pm – 8 pm (doors open 5:45pm)

📍the Whitworth

🎟️ Tickets £4.00

“Blurs the lines between facts and fiction to examine addiction and recovery.” Liverpool Biennial

Visually striking… A reminder of how dextrous the documentary form can be.” Sheffield Doc Fest

Artist Melanie Manchot’s debut feature is a visually striking film-within-a-film, exploring mental health and addiction.

STEPHEN, the acclaimed hybrid fiction/documentary by artist and filmmaker Melanie Manchot, offers a compelling and deeply human exploration of identity, recovery, mental health and the blurred boundaries between performance and lived experience. Centred on Stephen Giddings both a real person and the protagonist he portrays, the film follows his transformative journey as he auditions to play a version of himself, navigating themes of addiction, trauma, and self‑understanding. Through a blend of scripted drama, observational footage, and interviews, Manchot constructs a layered narrative in which fiction and reality continually fold into one another.

Developed in collaboration with a Liverpool community in recovery from substance use, the film brings together professional and non‑professional actors, creating a powerful ensemble whose performances resonate with authenticity and emotional depth. The film draws on historical references, of Thomas Goudie, a bank employee who embezzled £170,000 to pay gambling debts, and whose arrest became the subject of the first ever police reconstruction filmed by Mitchell and Kenyon in 1901.

STEPHEN immerses audiences in a world where personal narrative becomes cinematic language, underscoring how stories of struggle and resilience echo across time.

Visually bold and emotionally charged, STEPHEN is both a portrait of one man and a reflection on universal desires for change, connection, and meaning. It stands as a testament to the power of collaborative filmmaking and the elasticity of the documentary form.

Programmed as part of the exhibition Recoverist Curators: Reimagining the World We Live In at the Whitworth until 5 July 2026. A partnership between the Whitworth led by Portraits of Recovery, a visual arts charity working with contemporary art and people identifying as in recovery from substance use.

Melanie Manchot

Across film, video, photography and sound, Melanie Manchot's work pursues enquiries into the processes that lead towards our individual and collective identities. Her projects interrogate and employ acts of care, resistance and communality to engage in discourses on social and political urgencies. Performance-to-camera, reconstruction and participation as well as location-based research are recurring methodologies in her work. Using cameras as organizing principles, works operate on the threshold of documentary and staged events to investigate how fact, fiction and observation offer strategies for speaking about our shifting place in an increasingly mediated world.

About the venue

The Whitworth is an accessible venue with facilities to support you during your visit, and alongside this our visitor team will be on hand to assist you in the gallery. Find out more about planning your visit to the Whitworth and accessibility information for you. If you’d like to speak to a team member about any access or additional needs, please get in touch with the gallery and we will be happy to assist you. Contact: whitworth@manchester.ac.uk or telephone: 0161 275 7450.