Part of the Social Features screening series.

Ever since the director Carol Morley read the news article about a mysterious woman who had been discovered, 3 years after her death, in her bedsit in North London, she felt compelled to investigate further.

The woman, 38-year-old Joyce Vincent, was found sitting on her sofa, surrounded by part-wrapped Christmas presents, with the television still on and blaring in the background.

Morley spent five years tracking down people who knew Joyce and painstakingly recreated her life, and demise, partly through traditional documentary means but also via reconstructed (or imagined) scenes using actors – Joyce is played by actor Zawe Ashton (Case Histories, Fresh Meat). She uncovered the truth about the terrible, lonely death of someone who was admired, liked and desired by many, loved by some, and yet not missed by anyone for three years.

This captivating film Dreams of a Life is not only a biopic of a talented and popular person, but it also reveals a portrait of urban lives lived in the London of the eighties, caught up in the City, its music, and its people.