THE MERCURY NEWS / Bay Area, CA
When director Thiago Dadalt and executive producer Dru Miller set out to make a movie about a middle-age housewife with early onset Alzheimer’s disease who goes missing in downtown Los Angeles, he intended to tell a fictional story. Instead, his short feature film led him to direct a documentary about a family’s very real struggle to find missing housewife Nancy Paulikas. “Where Is Nancy?” has its first of three screenings at the Cinequest Film and Creativity Festival on March 8.
Dadalt started filming his short “Chocolate” in July 2016. Paulikas, who has early onset Alzheimer’s, went missing that October after wandering away from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Dadalt got involved in the search after Piercey Dalton, the lead actress on his movie, found a flier asking for information about Paulikas’ whereabouts.
Paulikas’ husband, Kirk Moody, came to the premiere of Dadalt’s short film. The director said Moody “could see himself in the film.”
“We became really close helping spread the word about Nancy the first year” after she disappeared, Dadalt says. “I thought we’d find her.”
They didn’t, so Dadalt, who says he doesn’t usually make documentaries, decided to use his filmmaking talents to help the cause.
“I felt compelled to tell this story,” the director adds.
Once the media coverage of Paulikas’ disappearance died down, Dadalt says, the documentary became “a way for me to get more attention for her case.”
The director says he was surprised by Moody’s willingness to have filmmakers follow him and Paulikas’ parents throughout the search for his wife.
“It probably wasn’t a good feeling to have cameras on them,” he adds, “but they needed to tell her story.”
In the search for his wife, Moody worked with LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who went on to establish LA Found, a countywide initiative to help locate individuals with Alzhemer’s, dementia or autism who wander. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 60 percent of people with dementia will wander away at some point.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the creation of LA Found in February 2018. Paulikas’ remains were found later that year.
Dadalt says he made his documentary in the hopes of keeping others who wander away from meeting Paulikas’ fate.
“People have to know that these things can happen,” he adds. “I want something good to come out of this.”
“Where Is Nancy?” plays March 8 at 5 p.m. at the Hammer Theatre, 101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose. Tickets at Cinequest.org.
By ANNE GELHAUS | agelhaus@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: March 5, 2020
