Bob

This six-part podcast goes in search of the love of 84-year-old Elisa's life, examining the complex way our memories work. According to Elisa's daughters, in recent years their mother—who is suffering from dementia—has been talking about the boy next door, Bob. The story is that she fell madly in love with him as a 15-year-old girl, ended up pregnant and was forced to give up the baby in a convent. Her memories are so vivid it seems worthwhile to go in search of this Bob. But finding someone you're not even sure exists turns out to be a really difficult undertaking. Swinging from hope to despair, sadness to hilarity, and from genuine doubt to surprising discoveries, the podcast makers penetrate ever deeper into the gray areas of the brain as it succumbs to dementia. This layered, self-conscious montage of musings, ambient sound, subtle music and interviews with experts and others creates a landscape in which the truth is never simple, even when discovered. The mysterious Bob eventually proves to be a great cliffhanger, effortlessly drawing the listener into the next episode. For IDFA, the podcast was adapted into an interactive multimedia performance, made possible by the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant.