Why Did You Kill My Dad?

Early one Sunday morning in 2007, 75-year-old Philip Hendy was fatally stabbed by a man with a long history of serious mental health problems. Normally such cases just get a few lines in the local press. But Philip Hendy’s son, Julian, is an award winning filmmaker who has been making acclaimed documentaries for more than 20 years.

This highly personal film documents Julian’s journey to find out what happened to his Dad and his attempt to uncover the true scale and cost of killings by the seriously mentally ill in Britain today.

During the course of the film, Julian interviews mental health experts – including Louis Appleby, National Director for Mental Health for England and Wales and Tony Maden, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry and Consultant Psychiatrist at Broadmoor Hospital – as well as investigating similar cases across the country to uncover the scale of the problem.

Talking to other similarly affected families puts a human face to the statistics and reveals serious problems and repeated failures at the heart of Britain’s mental health system.

Julian has also launched the hundred families website, where he provides invaluable advice to any family affected by a similar tragedy, and access to all of the NHS reports he collected while making the documentary.