Lucy Walker Directing Ibogaine Feature Doc ‘Of Night & Light’, Lands Secret Tribeca Slot

Lucy Walker, the British filmmaker behind Oscar-nominated docs Waste Land and The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, has lined up her latest feature doc.

Walker is directing Of Night and Light: The Story of Iboga and Ibogaine and the film has landed a secret slot at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Of Night and Light: The Story of Iboga and Ibogaine tells the astounding unknown story of what might be the aha scientific breakthrough moment of our generation.

Back in 1962 a teenage psychonaut in New York City named Howard Lotsof experimented with an obscure psychedelic from the root bark of a West African shrub and recognized its unique therapeutic potential. Together with his African-American wife Norma, a pair of outsider NYU film students, they dedicated their lives to getting science and government to research it, convinced that it would be of great medicinal benefit, despite it sounding too good to be true, like the very definition of snake oil, and being written off as con artists.

But they ultimately triumph and ibogaine has helped emancipate over one hundred thousand people from opiate addiction and also got the attention of US special forces veterans, who have been experiencing dramatic relief from a spectrum of addictions and mental health problems and physical disabilities, triggering jaw dropping new research about to be published that suggests that ibogaine is the most powerful therapeutic ever observed for the human central nervous system.

It is Walker’s latest trip into the psychedelics space after directing and exec producing Netflix four-part series How To Change Your Mind adapted from the New York Times bestseller by Michael Pollan.

UTA Independent Film Group is selling the film out of Tribeca.

It will premiere in the Spotlight Documentary Section on Friday June 16th at 8:30pm with furth screenings on June 17 and 18.

Directed by Lucy Walker, she produces by Walker, Julian Cautherley, Lyn Davis Lear and Laurie Benenson.

Walker is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker for The Crash Reel and was nominated for two Oscars for her work on Waste Land and The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. Her films have twice won at Sundance and twice won at Berlin.

Walker said, “To me Ibogaine is quite possibly the most fascinating molecule ever to be discovered and researched and it has been an incredible journey to make this film. So much has changed since I began this journey five years ago. Not just because of the broader psychedelic renaissance, but also because incredible new revelations are just now confirming all we had suspected about its unique therapeutic value. It is such a beautiful validation of the work of the pioneering outsiders whose story the film tells.”

By Peter White