International Films

Decoding Annie Parker

Based on true events, Decoding Annie Parker is the hopeful and touching story of two remarkable women and their 15-year battle against a cruel and insidious illness, breast cancer. Waged on both scientific and emotional fronts, they are drawn together not just by the disease but by their shared determination and unconventional approaches to their research and to their lives.

Annie Parker (Samantha Morton) has a personal relationship with breast cancer. Her mother and her sister died of the disease and ultimately she is diagnosed with it too. Naturally affable with an offbeat sense of humour – even in the face of her own mortality, she struggles to hold her family and life together, as her body betrays her.

Meanwhile, geneticist Mary-Claire King (Helen Hunt) is convinced there is a link between DNA and cancer–even if no-one in her profession shares her belief. Against the advice of nearly all of her colleagues, she persists in her research and her dogged pursuit for funding that will lead to the ground-breaking study that will join the two women together.

Decoding Annie Parker follows the incredible, irreverent and heartwarming true story of how Annie and Marie-Claire’s paths intersect. With grace and humour, the film chronicles how these remarkable women work to make one of the most important genetic discoveries of the 20th century.

YEAR: 2015

GENRE: Drama

DIRECTOR: Steven Bernstein

WRITER: Adam Bernstein, Steven Bernstein

PRODUCER: Clark Peterson, Mary Vernieu

CAST: Helen Hunt, Samantha Morton, Aaron Paul

CLASSIFICATION: M – Mature themes, sex scenes and coarse language

DURATION: 91 minutes

LANGUAGE: English