Don’t Forget to Remember review – art, identity and the slow disintegration of dementia

This elegiac Irish film documents the relationship between street artist Asbestos and his mother, and the public art project he makes to help process his grief

A strange but reassuring ouroboros effect is in place in Ross Killeen’s documentary about dementia. One of the things that ailing Helena is able to recall is her son’s insistence as a child on embracing creative thinking. Now a grown man and operating as a street artist under the moniker Asbestos, art is the means by which he seeks to grasp her identity and come to terms with her disintegration. It is a labour that encircles her, spills out on to the streets of Dublin and colours the fabric of this crisp, sensitive film.

Helena no longer remembers what day of the week it is, or the month. Her husband tries to reignite her synapses by consulting her on crosswords. The film is drowning in mnemonic fragments: archive footage of family time and old holidays, and street scenes in which Helena’s strolling figure has been scrawled over. But if all this is flagging up memory’s fallibility, it doesn’t stop Asbestos trying to make sense of the inner world. His surrealist murals amplify his preoccupation with identity, and he comes up with a striking gambit to address his personal grief: an exhibition of chalk-on-blackboard drawings of his family that he invites the public to erase or draw over.

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