Los Angeles-based Heidi Levitt is best-known in the film industry as a casting agent, with credits including The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. She also cast JFK, Nixon, Natural Born Killers, The Rock and The Joy Luck Club and has worked with an impressive list of directors including Oliver Stone, Wayne Wang, Sally Potter, Wim Wenders, Diego Luna and Mark Ruffalo.

But when Heidi visits Galway for next week’s Film Fleadh, it will be as the director and co-producer of the documentary Walk With Me.

“It’s not the film I was looking to make, but the film I had to make,” she says of the documentary which will receive its Irish premiere next Thursday, July 10, at the Pálás, when Heidi and her husband Charlie Hess will attend.

In April 2019, Charlie, an award-winning graphic designer, photo editor and community volunteer, was diagnosed early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. He was 57 and had gone  for tests after feeling a ‘fogginess’ in his brain.

As a casting director and producer, Heidi is used to fixing problems, and she immediately began explore the implications of this disease and any possible treatments.

The couple soon learned that the few drugs that were approved by the US FDA could only slow its progression – if they worked at all.

“As hard as it was to live with this diagnosis, it felt worse to hide it, so I convinced my husband to make this film with me,” Heidi says. Working on the documentary helped her to cope with this life-changing diagnosis, while showing that their story was universal.

This film focuses on living with dementia, rather than on the end stages, which is what’s usually covered in the media.

Dementia afflicts fifty million people worldwide (Alzheimer’s is the most common form) and they wanted to create a greater awareness of the condition and shed some of the stigma around it.

Walk With Me follows Charlie, his family and friends over four and a half years, with filming taking place a couple of times a year. It was shot in their home in Vermont as well as in LA, and the couple’s two children are central to the piece. So too are others with the condition, including Heidi’s mother, Marion.

And Heidi, a true powerhouse, organised meetings with leading doctors, as well as investigating drug trials as the family focused on living in the now, even while facing an unknown future.

There are heartbreaking moments as Charlie’s world shrinks and he struggles for words. Sometimes, he’s exhausted, sometimes frustrated and mostly he’s happy, especially in the company of his beloved dog, Rusto. He continues to paint and take photos and it’s in the painting especially that the ravages of the disease are most apparent.

Heidi’s love and care for her husband of more than 30 years are unfaltering, even when he takes his frustrations out on her. In counselling, she learns about the high mortality rate among caregivers and how the people being cared for can often outlive them.

But this is a family with strong foundations, who are open, honest and humorous about the challenges they face and the love they share.

Through the years, Heidi has worked as a producer on projects with directors she casts for and longtime friend, Oscar-Award-winning Alex Gibney, is the executive producer on Walk With Me.

Best-known in Ireland for No Stone Unturned, the 2017 documentary he made with Northern Ireland journalists Trevor McBirney and Barry McCaffrey about the 1994 Loughinisland massacre in County Down, he’s one of an extraordinary team who collaborated on this beautifully shot, life-affirming documentary about love and loyalty.

■ Walk with Me will premiere next Thursday, July 10, at 11am in the Pálás, with a post-show discussion. Tickets at tht.ticket solve.com

Pictured: In the early stages of the disease, Heidi and Charlie focused on spending time together, doing things they enjoyed.