Painkiller: Inside the Opioid Crisis (2018)

After taking aim at the pharmaceutical industry in his Toronto International Film Festival-selected documentary Living Proof, director Matt Embry sets his sights on the opioid epidemic devastating North America. An epidemic fuelled by legal industry, exacerbated by misguided drug policies and annihilated by fentanyl, a drug 100x times more powerful than heroin with a nearly unmanageable margin of error that is contaminating supplies everywhere. Painkiller features heartbreaking interviews with those who have survived opioid addictions and the families of those who didn't. Embry also asks experts including frontline responders, border services and addiction specialists to address the underlying problem to this ongoing crisis: How can our society can treat pain without causing more?