Some stories are difficult to capture with a camera. Others find their clearest expression through drawings. Living With a Visionary, an award-winning animated documentary about marriage, caregiving and an altered sense of reality, belongs to the latter group. Now, the Oscar-winning directors of KPop Demon Hunters, Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, are helping bring this deeply personal film to a wider audience.
The filmmakers have joined Stephen P. Neary’s short as executive producers ahead of its premiere this week through The New York Times Op-Docs. Their involvement brings additional attention to a project that has already earned major festival honors, yet its most compelling quality remains the intimate story at its center.
A 50-year marriage becomes the heart of Living With a Visionary
Based on poet John Matthias’ memoir of the same name, Living With a Visionary explores his relationship with Diana, an art curator and his wife of five decades. Their shared life changes when medication prescribed for Diana’s Parkinson’s disease causes vivid hallucinations, some of them unexpectedly beautiful.
As John becomes her caregiver, he faces a situation that cannot be understood through ordinary explanations alone. Rather than treating Diana’s imagined experiences simply as obstacles, he gradually learns to accommodate the world she perceives.
That perspective gives the documentary its emotional foundation. It is not merely a film about illness, but about how a relationship adapts when two people no longer experience reality in quite the same way. The story approaches caregiving through patience, affection and the complicated feelings that accompany profound changes in a loved one’s life.
James Cromwell provides the narration, lending a human voice to a story built around memory and imagination. Meanwhile, Neary uses animation to move between recognizable experiences and images that would be difficult to communicate through conventional documentary footage.
For viewers looking for the essential details, here is what has been confirmed about the short:
- Title: Living With a Visionary.
- Format: Animated documentary short film.
- Writer, director and animator: Stephen P. Neary.
- Original material: John Matthias’ memoir Living With a Visionary.
- Central story: John and Diana’s 50-year marriage, her Parkinson’s treatment and his experience as her caregiver.
- Narrator: James Cromwell.
- Producers: Stephen P. Neary and Mireia Vilanova.
- Executive producers: Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans.
- Animation technique: Thousands of hand-drawn images created on intersecting layers of vellum.
- Upcoming premiere: The New York Times Op-Docs during the week of November 9, 2026.
KPop Demon Hunters directors recognize a different kind of animated storytelling
The arrival of Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans is notable because Living With a Visionary occupies a very different creative space from their Oscar-winning film. This is an independent documentary, not a KPop Demon Hunters spin-off or a story connected to its fictional universe.
However, both projects demonstrate how animation can communicate emotions that might be harder to express through other forms of filmmaking. In this case, drawings allow Neary to explore experiences that exist between physical reality, memory and perception.
According to The Hollywood Reporter’s November 9 exclusive, Kang expressed admiration for Neary’s ability to complete such a moving project while simultaneously working full-time on KPop Demon Hunters and raising a family. She also emphasized the importance of unusual, individual voices in animation, particularly when meaningful stories emerge from unexpected places.
Appelhans approached the documentary through its emotional qualities. He praised the way it brings together love, grief, hallucinations and human connection, while also recognizing the contribution of Cromwell’s narration. His response highlights something essential about the film: its visual experimentation serves the people whose experiences inspired it.
Neary, in turn, welcomed their support. Although he acknowledged the enormous stylistic distance between the two productions, he identified emotional sincerity as a quality they share. Animation, he suggested, can reach audiences in ways they might never anticipate.
There is a broader cinematic distinction worth considering. An upcoming animated John Wick prequel exploring the Impossible Task demonstrates how the medium can expand an established action franchise. Living With a Visionary moves in another direction entirely, using artistic freedom to explore a private human experience rather than enlarge a fictional world.
Stephen P. Neary drew the film by hand while working on KPop Demon Hunters
The documentary’s production history is almost as remarkable as its visual approach. Neary created thousands of individual drawings on overlapping sheets of vellum, a translucent material that allows images to interact across different layers.
He developed this painstaking work over three years, largely during evenings and weekends. Throughout that period, he maintained a full-time job as a story artist and taught classes at the California Institute of the Arts, commonly known as CalArts.
That commitment helps explain why the film’s handmade appearance matters. Its layered imagery is not simply an aesthetic flourish. The technique provides a visual way to consider overlapping perceptions, shifting memories and the fragile boundaries between what people see and what those closest to them understand.
Neary also brings considerable experience in mainstream animation. He created and served as showrunner of The Fungies!, associated with Cartoon Network and HBO Max, and previously worked as a supervising producer on the Annie-nominated series Clarence.
His story artist credits span KPop Demon Hunters, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Rio and The Peanuts Movie. Nevertheless, Living With a Visionary offers something distinct from those productions: a project shaped around his own directorial vision and a deeply personal literary source.
Animation has long relied on the combination of visual craft and performance to make audiences care about characters. That history includes Donnie Dunagan’s unforgettable childhood voice performance as young Bambi in Disney’s animated classic. Neary’s documentary approaches emotional storytelling from another perspective, pairing Cromwell’s narration with drawings that convey the inner world of its subjects.
The film reaches Op-Docs after major festival recognition
Living With a Visionary arrives at its New York Times premiere with significant recognition already behind it. Its festival achievements provide an important reason to pay attention beyond the involvement of two prominent executive producers.
The confirmed festival honors and upcoming presentation include:
- Sundance Film Festival 2026: Winner of the Short Film Jury Award for Animation.
- AFI Fest: Winner of the Grand Jury Award for Animation.
- The New York Times Op-Docs: Scheduled to premiere during the week of November 9, 2026.
- Op-Docs 2026 slate: Included among nine films the series identifies as potential awards contenders.
- Other titles in that group: Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Revolution Against Death, The Tuners and A Wolf in the Suburbs.
Festival awards give the short a strong start
These achievements establish the short as a recognized work in its own right. Kang and Appelhans are joining a film that has already attracted attention through its filmmaking and festival reception, rather than introducing an untested project.
Its inclusion in the Op-Docs lineup also creates an opportunity for audiences beyond the festival circuit to encounter Neary’s work. Although the series considers the film a potential awards contender, that designation should not be confused with an announced Oscar nomination.
For now, the confirmed viewing information is limited to its premiere through The New York Times Op-Docs this week. No specific premiere day or additional viewing platform has been established in the reported details.
Ultimately, the significance of this collaboration extends beyond recognizable names. KPop Demon Hunters brought Kang and Appelhans widespread recognition, but their support for Living With a Visionary draws attention to a quieter possibility for animation: helping audiences understand experiences that are deeply personal, difficult to describe and profoundly human.
Neary’s documentary offers a reminder that a moving animated film does not need an enormous fictional universe. Sometimes, the story of two people learning to remain connected through extraordinary circumstances is more than enough.
Creator of the website, Pokemon trainer by nature. Trying to report on everything related to the world of video games, series and movies. Yu-Gi-Oh is my weakness, collecting cards since the dawn of time.
