Dreams of a Life

This documentary explores the life of Joyce Vincent, a 38-year-old woman who died in her apartment in 2003, but whose death went unnoticed for three years., Zawe Ashton takes the lead role in this drama-documentary, director Carol Morley’s quest to discover the truth about the life of a vivacious, intelligent woman – and how she came to be so tragically forgotten. Nobody noticed when 38-year-old Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in north London in 2003. When her remains were discovered three years later, her heating and her television were still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of Joyce’s life – not even a photograph. Who was Joyce Vincent? And how could this happen to someone in our day and age, supposedly an age of communication? In an attempt to find out, Morley places adverts in newspapers, on the internet and on the side of a London taxi, and the responses lead her to Joyce’s former friends, lovers and colleagues. Their testimonies, together with re-imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, form a multi-layered portrait of the deceased woman, and an insight into the world she inhabited. Morley’s film explores modern life and reveals how much and yet how little we may ever know each other. With Alix Luka-Cain, Cornell S John and Neelam Bakshi., This fascinating documentary explores the life of Joyce Vincent, a 38-year-old woman who died in her apartment in 2003, but whose death went unnoticed for three years., In 2006, repossession agents broke down the door of an apartment in the North London neighborhood of Wood Green and made a shocking discovery — the woman who lived there, Joyce Vincent, was dead. Even more remarkably, police investigators determined that Vincent had been lying dead in her flat for close to three years, with the lights on, the television running, and her unopened mail littering the floor. How did a seemingly healthy woman of 38 suddenly die in her apartment? More importantly, how could Vincent have been missing for three years without friends or neighbors taking note of it? Filmmaker Carol Morley became fascinated with Vincent’s story and began an investigation of her own. The documentary Dreams of a Life is the product of Morley’s efforts to reveal just who Joyce Vincent was, who her friends and family were, and how a beautiful and talented woman could so readily fall off the radar of the people closest to her. Dreams of a Life received its world premiere at the 2011 London Film Festival.