Look Into My Eyes, a documentary film out in theaters Sept. 6, follows seven psychics in New York City, taking the audience behind the scenes as they conduct readings for clients.
The documentary is not trying to convince viewers that psychics are real or fake. That, director Lana Wilson says, viewers will have to judge for themselves. Instead, Wilson—who also made the documentaries Miss Americana and Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields—wanted to provide an inside look at what it’s actually like to participate in a reading.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“I’m not trying to convince anyone here that psychic readings are real,” Wilson tells TIME. “I’m trying to give people the emotional experience of being in a psychic reading, and I’m hoping to give people the chance to understand that this is about processing our lives, processing loss, grief, pain, and having the space to do that in.”
A psychic—also known as a clairvoyant or medium—is someone who claims to be able to communicate with the dead and predict the future, and psychics vary in terms of how much of each of those skills they claim to possess. Communicating with the dead became popular in America during the Civil War, when so many Americans lost loved ones and were desperate to maintain some kind of connection with them.
Wilson called up several psychics during the COVID-19 pandemic because she was curious about what it was like to be a psychic during a time of so much uncertainty. When she got the greenlight to make her film, Wilson interviewed over 150 mediums to find main characters. They let her film some of their sessions and even let her into their homes. Since psychics get a bad rap for financially exploitative practices, she tells TIME that she was looking for “people who were genuine about what they’re doing, who will openly question and doubt what they’re doing, but are genuinely trying to connect to something bigger than themselves.”
To recruit subjects for the sessions in the movie, a group of production assistants who spoke 11 languages set up tables offering free psychic readings in New York parks and outside grocery stores. The assistants had initial conversations with potential clients, and then one of the filmmakers interviewed them further over Zoom and select the subjects featured in the film. About 90% of the sessions in the film came from the tables the filmmakers set up around the city.
Many of the psychics featured in the movie wanted to be actors or performers for a living. Michael Kim is an actor who balances auditions with his sessions. Eugene Grygo is a playwright and screenwriter who is passionate about singing and is seen taking voice lessons throughout the movie as he prepares to sing “And So It Goes” at an open mic night. Sherrie Lynne—a “party psychic” who is hired to do readings at parties—went to art school and is seen painting throughout the film. Phoebe Hoffman—an animal psychic who claims to read the minds of people’s pets—is an aspiring actress with a John Waters-themed living room.
Several of the featured psychics had traumatic upbringings and experienced losses at a young age, which helps them empathize with their clients. Grygo breaks down in tears as he recalls losing his brother as a teenager. Kim is able to share his own struggles as an adopted child living with white parents to a client who is also Asian with white parents and who wants to know if he can communicate with her birth parents. The psychic Per Erik Borja tears up while talking about how much he misses his best friend who died years ago, saying in the film, “people think we know all of the answers, but when it comes to our own lives, we’re just as blind.”
The documentary suggests that whether psychic readings are accurate is besides the point. The film shows that strangers talking one-on-one—that companionship—can be even more valuable. “If it resonates with the person I’m talking to, it doesn’t f***ing matter,” Ilka Poinheiro, one of the featured psychics, puts it in the film.
Wilson wants viewers to see how cathartic it is to talk to a great listener or participate in an activity that makes them feel understood. As she tells TIME, “in the end, it’s all about the connection. We, as humans, so deeply have a need to feel really seen and connected to other people. It feels like magic when it occurs, and that can happen through a psychic reading, through a conversation, when you’re talking to a faith leader, when you’re watching a movie or reading a book.”
