Each year in Britain around 2,500 people are buried alone. No one claims them, and no one attends their funeral. Others have lain dead and undiscovered for weeks, or even years, before they are found, and relatives traced. Driven by a desire to find out more about these lonely individuals from the people who knew and loved them, Lucy Cohen's bittersweet debut film pieces together two peoples' lives, and asks how - in crowded, hectic, connected, modern Britain - it is possible for anyone to simply slip through the cracks and disappear?
The film tells the stories of two people who died in Manchester. They were on the same case files of the same coroner, and are buried in the same graveyard. Opening with the haunting image of yet another unattended funeral, Cohen uses the coroner's reports, painstaking reconstruction, online detective work, and good old-fashioned leg work to uncover stories of hidden lives.
Knocking on neighbours' doors, hanging out in the corner shop, tracking down contemporaries from university and hearing memories from school friends, Cohen paints a picture of real people, uncovering touching stories: the hard-working student dreaming of setting up his own business, and the fashion-conscious girl who stood up to school bullies and played on the street.
"There is a common misconception that the elderly in our community die in circumstances where they might have little or no contact with relations or friends," says Manchester coroner Nigel Meadows. "But in fact the reality is that people of any age can die like that."
Each story starts with the discovery of a body. Lucy talks to the local lads who accidentally kicked a ball into a garden - only to discover 34-year-old Nigerian-born Akinyemi Akinpelu lying dead inside, as he had been for several months. "He had no bed sheets on his bed or anything - nothing at all," explains Mark, one of the lads. "And all his clothes were in suitcases on the floor as if he was just about to pack up and go." Nobody had noticed he was missing. Akinyemi's neighbour, Elaine, remembers him without irony as, "a good neighbour... you didn't know he was there."
But behind the body lies the story of a real person. Akinyemi's college friend Femi, who did not know Aki had died until Cohen told him, remembers a man who arrived from Nigeria with a suitcase filled with £10,000 in university fees, driven by an ambition to make the best of himself: "I remember when we were having a lecture there was a professor and he asked us where we would like in be in five years' time. Aki put his hand up and said in five years' time he wanted to go back to Nigeria and start his own engineering company. I thought 'Wow, that's good'."
Following Akinyemi's many attempts across the years to get a degree, each time apparently thwarted by his inability to afford the fees, Cohen wonders how affected he was by his failure to return to his family in Nigeria with the masters degree he came to the UK to study for. "His family... that keeps coming to mind," says Femi. "It's three years since he died. Do they still think he is still alive? How can someone live in these circumstances? Somebody will be looking for him somewhere."
Sandra Drummond, 44, lay undiscovered in her Manchester flat for nearly a year. Cohen painstakingly recreates Sandra's bedroom from photos in the coroner's report, trying to uncover the woman behind the collection of skin-care jars, magazines, dolls - and a hot-water bottle. But it is Sandra's school friends who give the most compelling portrait of her - the tall girl with a love of fashion, the girl who stood up to the bullies and was funny. Friend Kay remembers: "It upsets me now thinking about it... You don't even know if she suffered or if she was waiting for someone to come and save her. I think that I would rather remember her as that really sweet girl who was our protector. She was lovely and someone should have protected her, you know?"
"This can easily happen," adds Sandra's other school friend Alya. "It can happen to anyone".
Celebrating these lost lives, Cohen finds warmth, humour and touching stories far removed from the bleakness of a lonely death. And taking us back to their gravesides, Cohen pays her respects to those who died unnoticed - but who lived like the rest of us.
Am very shocked to hear this sad news about my dear friend. We have been friends since our secondary schools days at Abadina College, Ibadan. We continued to be friends when we were admitted to the university of ibadan. We were really very close until during our nation youth service corps, when i heard that he has left for united kingdon for further studies. We lost contact during this time and i made efforts to contact him through phone and email, but couldnt get any one who has his contact details. I came to the UK myself in may 2005 and stepped up my pursuit of locating him. The only information i got was when he visited another friend in birmingham for about a week. His friend in birmingham was very helpful in giving me his phone numbers, which i kept phoning every day until i got feed up thinking that he has left for another continent possibly america. I only got to know of his demise just two weeks ago. This is really very painful for me and am yet to come to terms that he is no more.
August 29th - 5:45pmAkinbode Akinpelu said...
I am writing you to inform you that i am the brother of the desaeased Akinyemi Akinpelu who died unsung in manchester,uk. it was a very painful and sad news. we only heard about his death which was published on the nigerian news paper(the nations) on sunday 24th of august 2008, but i got to know about the incidence on monday,25th of aug.2008.we need much details of his death.and i will like to thank lucy cohen for her report bode akinpelu.
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