"Living with a Visionary": A Tender Animated Portrait of Love and Illness

We all have unique ways of seeing the world.

“Living with a Visionary” is a 2026 animated short film directed by Stephen P. Neary. Based on John Matthias' memoir, an older couple is undergoing a difficult time as John’s wife, Diana, develops memory problems from Parkinson’s Disease. John continues to love Diana, along with her vivid hallucinations and other world events.

I watched “Living with a Visionary” at the Sundance Film Festival. My favorite part of film festivals is discovering films that take unique approaches to talk about common subjects. “Living with a Visionary” is a colorful, creative, and deep presentation on the effects of Dementia and a couple’s love.

Director Stephen P. Neary grew up as a creative kid in Indianapolis. Neary studied at New York University, where he rediscovered his passion for animation and storyboarding. He became a storyboard artist at CalArts in 2006. He’s worked on several projects in the entertainment field, including Netflix’s “The K-Pop Demon Hunters.”

Neary said he read Matthias’s memoir in the middle of the pandemic when he had just become a new parent. “The story devastated me, but I was also struck by its haunting imagery and flashes of dark humor,” Neary said.

James Cromwell and Katherine LaVictoire voice the characters. You may remember Cromwell, who played Farmer Hoggett in “Babe” (1995). Cromwell’s narration is a standout performance. His voice carries the weight of the situation, but love is always there.

The animation is vivid and lively. I studied every screenshot closely while watching. For example, Diana hallucinates a Chinese poem as transforming butterflies. The images almost feel like memories in a storybook that are slightly blurred and have a dream-like quality.

I always enjoy learning the behind-the-scenes of any film. “Living with a Visionary” was a four-year project that Neary worked on late at night or on weekends. From the beginning, Neary always wanted to animate it, describing it as a human story. He knew that in live action, Diana’s visions wouldn’t work as CGI and interrupt the emotional flow.

Neary animated most of the film himself, with help from artists he worked with on his show, “The Fungies,” and his CalArts students. He said he used layers of vellum with pencil and watercolor crayons over hand-drawn backgrounds. He then scanned the frames with a flatbed scanner to give a low frame rate and make it appear like a live-action storybook.

For an accurate portrayal of Diana’s disease, Neary consulted with his friend, Dr. Chris Elder, a neurologist from New York University.

“I wanted to approach the topic with empathy above anything else,” Neary said. “Ultimately, animation has this great quality of allowing the viewer to put themselves into the same situation.”

John and Laura’s love for one another is strong. The story is both heartwarming and sad. Any love story has bumps in the road, and it’s not always a happy storybook.

“Living with a Visionary” won the Short Film Jury Award for Animation at Sundance. There were a lot of tears in the audience, who approached Neary after the film, and shared their own stories about loved ones they knew with memory illnesses.

“I hope this film can allow more audiences to process their own love and losses,” Neary said. “I was relieved to hear that the story has a way of allowing people to sit with and process the grief, rather than be confronted by it.”

In just 15 minutes, this short film leaves an impact. Though sad, “Living with a Visionary” is a poetic exploration of memory and illness in a unique style.