A month after a truly triumphant appearance at the Vancouver Film Festival in October 2010, Hilary Stanton died in a car accident in Mexico.

Director Helen Slinger, and the crew of Bountiful Films, came to care deeply for Hilary during the production of When the Devil Knocks. We are honoured to have known her and feel privileged to have been entrusted with the telling of her remarkable story.

As she went through so much to get healthy and whole, it seems desperately unfair that Hilary didn’t have more time. But there’s comfort in knowing that she was finally truly happy and at peace and, for us at Bountiful, there’s comfort, too, in remembering how much pleasure Hilary found in the making of the documentary. As the credits rolled at the premiere screening in Vancouver, she glowed in the warmth of an absolutely thunderous standing ovation.

We mourn the passing of this powerful, irrepressible, wonderful woman. Hilary was very brave to lay open her life in the way that she did and she was proud of the resulting film, now her legacy.