Loving Highsmith is a unique look at the life of celebrated American author Patricia Highsmith based on her diaries and notebooks and the intimate reflections of her lovers, friends and family. Focusing on Highsmith’s quest for love and her troubled identity, the film sheds new light on her life and writing.
“Highsmith’s image is determined to a great extent by the last years of her life in Switzerland, and by her reputation as a grim, misanthropic crime writer – just as she was portrayed to me as a small child. When I began to study Highsmith’s notebooks and diaries in the Swiss Literary Archive and met with her former friends in various countries, I was extremely moved and surprised to discover a completely different person behind the familiar image: a beautiful young writer with an extremely romantic streak and a poetic style who led an incredibly active love life in the wild New York of the post-war years – and also a moving and unforgettable personality who fell in love with new women again and again.” (Eva Vitija)