As a child afraid of the dark, Sarah would call out to her mother, Midge, who - wielding her flashlight like a lightsaber - fended off the ghosts in Sarah’s room on countless nights, while her open-mindedness simultaneously granted Sarah the freedom to discover her own identity at a young age. Today, Sarah - a promising illustrator and activist living in San Francisco - sees her world upended when she detects the first signs of Alzheimer’s in her mother during a family vacation. Midge, her childhood hero and closest confidante, is rapidly drifting away from the woman she once was.

Adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s autobiographical graphic novel, Tangles explores how Alzheimer’s transforms not only a patient’s mind but also their relationships with loved ones and the collective history built over a lifetime. Through black-and-white visuals that evoke a melancholic atmosphere, the animation chronicles a family portrait alongside the sweeping landscape of the American counterculture during the 1990s and 2000s.