The Girl on the Bridge: NZIFF Review

Director Leanne Pooley's sensitively handled doco about suicide is a painfully honest affair that deserves all the oxygen it can muster.

Centring around 21-year-old Jazz Thornton, who herself tried repeated suicide attempts, Pooley's piece starts a conversation about the stigmatised issue.

Jazz created the webseries Jessica's Tree in 2019 after the death of a friend she couldn't save - Pooley decided to come along to document the process of the making of the piece.

Thanks to Thornton's honesty and the camera's unswerving eye, The Girl on the Bridge almost feels insufferably intrusive. 

The resilience shines through, though and while the documentary occasionally feels like it could do with a bit more of a trim to avoid repetition, the fact it starts the conversation deserves to be applauded and supported.

In among it all is Jazz Thornton, a young woman who has put it all on the line and out in the public eye.

Heartbreaking scenes show the continual pressure she's under, with people constantly messaging her threatening to take their own lives. Pooley's camerawork uses a lot of Thornton's confessional footage, but in moments where Thornton is on the edge and breaks down at her frustration at the system, the film does feel like it's on the edge and teetering.

But it's here that Pooley shows her strength and her clever approach to the film - it's sensitively handled in its use of unflinching honesty.

The Girl On The Bridge is an important documentary to view, as it gives a window into a world that's all too common and all too rarely discussed in the wider media world. 

However, it would be nothing without Jazz Thornton - she may refute the fact her resilience is the key factor here, and that it's important to have the conversations. 

But by showing her own heart and soul, coupled with Pooley's calm and methodical approach to the material, The Girl on the Bridge is a powerful piece that demonstrates the complexities and the flaws of a system, but never loses sight of the humanity of its central subject and its painfully raw subject matter.