The Devil and Daniel Johnston

The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006) is Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary you can watch online on iFILM — a portrait of the singer, songwriter and outsider artist who fought bipolar disorder his whole life.

Much of the film is built from Daniel Johnston's own archive: the home-recorded cassettes he handed out for free, his comic-book drawings, and hours of audio he taped of himself and everyone around him. It follows a kid from West Virginia who charmed the Austin underground while slipping deeper into mental illness. His parents, his manager, and musicians like Gibby Haynes and Thurston Moore fill in the rest.

What makes it land is how much comes straight from Johnston himself — you hear him as a child, at his most creative, and mid-breakdown, with nothing smoothed over. It took the Directing Award at Sundance in 2005. A hard but honest look at how a gift and an illness can grow from the same root. Stream The Devil and Daniel Johnston online on iFILM.