movies are not perfect depictions of reality, they often present themes in relatable, enriching, usefully challenging, and thought-provoking ways.
We invite you to explore mental health through movies that raise awareness, open dialogue, present complexity, entertain, and/or normalise experiences.
What are Feeding and Eating disorders?
There are times that you refuse to eat, perhaps because you have acid reflux, you’re not feeling hungry, you feel upset, or you’re too busy to eat on time. At other times, you eat the wrong things or more than you should. Neither of these scenarios, by themselves, indicates an eating disorder. Eating disorders are complex phenomena characterized by a severely destructive relationship with food that permeates throughout the psychology and lives of those affected. In eating disorders, out of control eating (or not eating) rituals, attempts to control, and obsessive food or body-related thoughts dominate people lives.
Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are the most well-known eating disorders. There are others. The DSM-5 (psychiatries most widely know diagnostic manual) describes them using the following criteria. These are abridged and included for educational purposes…
Not interested in the diagnostic criteria for eating disorders? Scroll down to go straight to the movies.
Note: Diagnosis requires the condition to be sufficiently severe to warrant additional clinical attention.
Pica
A. Persistent eating of nonnutritive, nonfood substances over a period of at least 1 month (e.g. dirt, clay, and flaking paint).
B. The eating of nonnutritive, nonfood substances is inappropriate to the developmental level of the individual.
C. The eating behaviour is not part of a culturally supported or socially normative practice.
Rumination Disorder
A. Repeated regurgitation of food over a period of at least 1 month. Regurgitated food may be re-chewed, re-swallowed, or spit out.
B. The repeated regurgitation is not attributable to an associated gastrointestinal or other medical condition.
C. The eating disturbance does not occur exclusively during the course of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, or avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder.
Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder
A. An eating or feeding disturbance (e.g., apparent lack of interest in eating or food; avoidance based on the sensory characteristics of food; concern about aversive consequences of eating) as manifested by persistent failure to meet appropriate nutritional and/or energy needs associated with one (or more) of the following:
1. Significant weight loss (or failure to achieve expected weight gain or faltering growth in children).
2. Significant nutritional deficiency.
3. Dependence on enteral feeding or oral nutritional supplements.
4. Marked interference with psychosocial functioning.
Anorexia Nervosa
A. Restriction of energy initial weight in the context of age, sex, developmental trajectory, and physical health. Significantly low weight is defined as a weight that is less than minimally normal or, for children and adolescents, less than that minimally expected.
B. Intense fear of gaining weight or of becoming fat, or persistent behaviour that interferes with weight gain, even though at a significantly low weight.
C. Disturbance in the way in which one’s body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or persistent lack of recognition of the seriousness of the current low body weight.
Bulimia Nervosa:
A. Recurrent episodes of binge eating. An episode of binge eating is characterised by both of the following:
1. Eating, in a discrete period of time (e.g., within any 2-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than what most individuals would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances.
2. A sense of lack of control over eating during the episode (e.g., a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating).
B. Recurrent inappropriate compensatory behaviours in order to prevent weight gain, such as self-induced vomiting; misuse of laxatives, diuretics, or other medications; fasting; or excessive exercise.
C. The binge eating and inappropriate compensatory behaviours both occur, on average, at least once a week for 3 months.
D. Self-evaluation is unduly influenced by body shape and weight.
E. The disturbance does not occur exclusively during episodes of anorexia nervosa.
Binge-Eating Disorder
A. Recurrent episodes of binge eating. An episode of binge eating is characterised by both of the following:
1. Eating, in a discrete period of time (e.g., within any 2-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than what most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances.
2. A sense of lack of control over eating during the episode (e.g., a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating).
B. The binge-eating episodes are associated with three (or more) of the following:
1. Eating much more rapidly than normal.
2. Eating until feeling uncomfortably full.
3. Eating large amounts of food when not feeling physically hungry.
4. Eating alone because of feeling embarrassed by how much one is eating.
5. Feeling disgusted with oneself, depressed, or very guilty afterward.
C. Marked distress regarding binge eating is present.
D. The binge eating occurs, on average, at least once a week for 3 months.
E. The binge eating is not associated with the recurrent use of inappropriate compensatory behaviour as in bulimia nen/osa and does not occur exclusively during the course of bulimia nervosa or anorexia nervosa.
Movies about Feeding and Eating disorders
If we missed an essential film about feeding and eating disorders, please let us know. We would love to include it.
Note: Movies may trigger painful memories and emotions. Please use your judgement and ensure support is available if need be.
Movie Title: To the Bone
Release: 2017
Rate: 6.8
Cast: Rebekah Kennedy, Lily Collins, Dana L. Wilson
Storyline: A young woman who suffers from an eating disorder meets a doctor who challenges her to face her condition.
Movie Title: The Best Little Girl in the World
Release: 1981
Rate: 6.5
Cast: Charles Durning, Eva Marie Saint, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Storyline: A girl who is ignored by her parents wants to be a ballet dancer but she needs to lose weight. After starving herself, she develops an eating disorder called anorexia nervosa.
Movie Title: Heathers
Release: 1988
Rate: 7.2
Cast: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty
Storyline: At Westerburg High where cliques rule, jocks dominate and all the popular girls are named Heather, it’s going to take a Veronica and mysterious new kid to give teen angst a body count.
Movie Title: For the Love of Nancy
Release: 1994
Rate: 6.5
Cast: Tracey Gold, Jill Clayburgh, Cameron Bancroft
Storyline: Based on a true story, a lady is obsessed with her physical appearance and conscious about her weight. She struggles with an eating disorder.
Movie Title: A Secret Between Friends: A Moment of Truth Movie
Release: 1996
Rate: 6.4
Cast: Lynda Carter, Katie Wright, Marley Shelton
Storyline: Two friends keep their vomiting a secret until one friend almost dies.
Movie Title: Perfect body
Release: 1997
Rate: 6.3
Cast: Amy Jo Johnson, Brett Cullen, Wendie Malick
Storyline: When a coach keeps on pressuring a gymnast to lose weight, she starves herself which led to an eating disorder.
Movie Title: Girl, Interrupted
Release: 1999
Rate: 7.3
Cast: Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie
Clea DuVall
Storyline: Stella who’s in the adolescence stage admires her elder sister Katja. She later discovers her sister’s secret – her eating disorder.
Movie Title: Sharing the Secret
Release: 2000
Rate: 6.6
Cast: Mare Winningham, Alison Lohman, Lawrence Monoson
Storyline: When her parents got divorced, a teenager struggles with an eating disorder called bulimia. She binges on food to gain control once in her life.
Movie Title: Starving in Suburbia
Release: 2014
Rate: 6.3
Cast: Laura Wiggins, Isabella Miko, Callie Thorne
Storyline: A teenage dancer visited a website that promotes thinness and an eating disorder called anorexia as a life choice. Her obsession has fully taken hold of her but her family tries to save her.
Movie Title: My Skinny Sister
Release: 2015
Rate: 7
Cast: Rebeka Josephson, Amy Diamond Henrik Norlén
Storyline: Stella who’s in the adolescence stage admires her elder sister Katja. She later discovers her sister’s secret – her eating disorder.
Movie Title: Binge
Release: 2016
Rate: 8.8
Cast: Yuri Baranovsky, Daniela DiIorio, Kim Fitzgerald
Storyline: Angela, a Bulimic disaster, drunkenly enrolls in eating disorder rehab where she must juggle her failing pastry shop, an affair with her therapist, and a cast of bizarre food-abusers, all while trying not to do what she does best: vomit.
Movie Title: Feed
Release: 2017
Rate: 6.2
Cast: Troian Bellisario, Tom Felton, Ben Winchell
Storyline: Based on writer Susanna Kaysen’s account of her 18-month stay at a mental hospital in the late 1960s.
Movie Title: The Wasting
Release: 2017
Rate: 4.1
Storyline: A teenager braves love and sexual awakening, and fights her controlling parents by refusing to eat…until a nightmare ghost appears that may be real, or may be a deadly creation of her starving body.
Movie Title: Swallow
Release: 2019
Rate: 6.5
Cast: Haley Bennett, Austin Stowell, Denis O’Hare
Storyline: Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife, finds herself increasingly compelled to consume dangerous objects. As her husband and his family tighten their control over her life, she must confront the dark secret behind her new obsession.
