Mariel comments early in the film on the fact that seven family members have committed suicide, including Ernest and Margaux.[7][9] Ernest shot himself a few months before his granddaughter Mariel was born.[10]
The film includes excerpts from lengthy footage filmed by Margaux in 1983, called by a reviewer the "most riveting depictions of the Hemingway clan".[11] It demonstrates the contrast between the two sisters: Margaux's modeling and acting career ultimately collapsed, and in 1996 she died of a drug overdose just days before the 35th anniversary of her grandfather's suicide,[12] while Mariel's early career was successful.[13] In the documentary, Mariel describes her own experience with depression and thoughts of suicide, which she says she has overcome,[14] and talks of her difficulties in dealing with sometimes abusive family members,[5][6][a] and with the mental illness of her sister Muffet, diagnosed with "bipolar schizophrenia".[4][11]
^She states in the documentary: "When I was really small, and I shared a room with Margaux, and my dad came in the room, you know... I don't wanna call it what it was, but it wasn't right, you know... um, it's hard to have a visual of that, you don't wanna see your dad doing those things, but I know it, I know it happened. I think that my dad abused the girls [Margaux and Joan], sexually abused the girls, um, when they were young. My dad, if you met him, was not, you don't think 'oh, pedophile', or this or that, you just didn't, that's not what came to your mind at all, at all, he was a beautiful man and in many ways, but I think it happened in drunk, you know, behavior, you know 'my wife doesn't love me', I don't know what the reasons were. You know 'I'm obsessed with my daughters', I don't know why a person can even go there.... I know people would say, 'there's no way in hell your father did that'. And yet, Margaux was obsessed with him, Muffet was obsessed with him, and my mother allowed me to sleep with her my whole childhood practically. I slept with my mom from age seven to age sixteen. But I witnessed it as a kid, so... that's why I thought it never happened to me, because... I don't know why it didn't, but I just assumed it happened to them and it didn't happen to me."[1]