All My Puny Sorrows, a heart-wrenching drama written, produced, and directed by Michael McGowan, based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, examines both the lightness and darkness that comes with depression.  

The film, which premiered at TIFF in 2021, follows two Mennonite sisters, Yoli (Alison Pill) and Elf (Sarah Gadon). Yoli is a writer going through a tough divorce while her sister Elf is a well-known concert pianist whose ongoing bout with depression now threatens to consume her. The sisters understand the depths of mental illness well since leaving the Mennonite community after their father unexpectedly killed himself.

“I thought it was an interesting story that Miriam had written, presenting a reason to die that I hadn't read before,” McGowan tells Final Draft when asked about why he was drawn to adapting the material.

“What Miriam wrote – ‘I want you to live and you want to die, therefore we are enemies who love each other.’ I thought it was this perfect distillation and I thought it was so intriguing and worth exploring in a screenplay – this idea of mental illness and wanting to die and the aftermath of that for those who are left behind and this perceived ‘selfishness’ that comes with that. Miriam presented an alternative examination of her experience with her sister. I had never read anything about suicide like that before and I hadn’t looked at suicide in that way before and I found it was so touching and inherently dramatic.”

When it came to tackling the delicate issue of mental illness, McGowan said he was inspired by Toews and her experience with her own father and sister upon which the novel is based.  

“One of the things that the book also has is this sense of humor that I thought was fantastic. It was pretty irreverent – Miriam’s way of looking at the world and navigating its ups and downs with humor was really appealing to me.”

McGown said the main challenge of adapting a novel is the “math” of it.

“How do you take a 400-page novel and reduce it down to a 100-page script? And then deciding what you’re going to leave behind and what you’re going to keep and focus on.”

While McGown initially thought the adaptation would be easy and would be done in a matter of weeks, he admits he was “stumped” when it came to balancing the sisters and their stories in the screenplay.

“Then I had a realization that a lot of the film is Yoli trying to restore balance in the universe. It didn't come from the book but it became a theme that I was sort of able to articulate and once I found that, that became my path to the rest of the adaptation.”

As for advice when it comes to adaptation, McGowan says the only important thing is if the screenwriter feels it will make a good adaptation.

“A lot of people who loved this book thought I was insane for adapting it. That was always surprising because even with the struggles I had while writing it, I knew there was a roadmap and I knew there was a reason to adapt this book, so I never questioned that because I had that inherent belief. Had I not had an inherent belief I might have given up. If a screenwriter responds to a book and can picture it as a great film, that’s all the impetus you need.”

McGown also says he thinks writers sometimes make the mistake of not looking to the marketplace as the end goal.

“For this book, I thought we could punch our weight up with casting and that would give us a leg up. It was just as much as ‘how do we get a film made from this book’ as ‘I love this book, I want to make this into a film.’ So I think considering however long it takes to write a screenplay, people should always look at how it will stand out [in the marketplace] and how it will get made.”

 In terms of what he wishes the audience might take away from his film, McGowan says, “I think the examination of mental illness is an act of empathy that Miriam wrote in the book and fictionalized about her own experience. And I want as a filmmaker for the audience to watch this family and take you on a journey that feels real. It’s ultimately a slice of life that makes an audience member reflect on their own experience and their own hopes and expectations.”    

 You can stream All My Punny Sorrows now on iTunes, Google, Amazon + more.