Decoding Annie Parker

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Decoding Annie Parker
Decoding Annie Parker.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Steven Bernstein
Written bySteven Bernstein
Michael Moss
Adam Bernstein
Produced bySteven Bernstein
Keith Kjarval
Clark Peterson
Stuart W. Ross
Ron Senkowski
Johnathan Brownlee
Mary Vernieu
Starring Samantha Morton
Alice Eve
Maggie Grace
Rashida Jones
Chris Mulkey
Aaron Paul
Richard Schiff
Marley Shelton
Corey Stoll
Bradley Whitford
Helen Hunt
CinematographyTed Hayash
Edited by Douglas Crise
Music by Steven Bramson
Production
companies
Dorado Media and Capital
Media House Capital
Story and Film
Ozymandias Productions
Distributed by Entertainment One Films
Release dates
  • April 4, 2013 (2013-04-04)(Palm Beach)
  • May 2, 2014 (2014-05-02)(United States)
Running time
91 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Decoding Annie Parker is a 2013 American drama film written and directed by Steven Bernstein. The film stars Samantha Morton, Helen Hunt and Aaron Paul. The film tells the story of Annie Parker [1] and the discovery of the BRCA1 breast cancer gene.

Contents

Plot

Eleven-year-old Annie Parker is living the perfect young life, loved by all, and especially by her mother, father, and older sister. But none of them knows that something horrible is stalking their perfect family. On a fall afternoon in 1976, young Annie hears a noise from upstairs. Her mother has collapsed and died, and an agonizing downward spiral begins.

At UC Berkeley, a brilliant research geneticist named Mary-Claire King is embarking on something of a personal crusade to uncover the genetic roots of breast cancer. While still in her twenties, she has already made a famous discovery that made the cover of the prestigious journal Science —quantifying the genetic variation between humans and chimpanzees. [2] But her conviction that there is a hereditary basis to at least some forms of breast cancer is not widely shared. Nevertheless, her tireless research throughout the 1980s would end in a medical breakthrough—the discovery of the location of the BRCA1 hereditary breast cancer gene—considered one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. [3]

At the age of 19, after the sudden death of her father, Annie marries Paul and soon becomes pregnant. She struggles to find a way in the world with her equally young but misguided husband and her older sister, Joan Parker who tries to become a surrogate parent to Anne. But, cruelly, Joan contracts the same cancer that killed their mother, and in a few months, she, too, is dead.

Annie is diagnosed with the same disease that killed her mother and sister—breast cancer. It is severe, and surgery and chemotherapy, with all the accompanying difficulties, soon follow. She loses her hair, and if that wasn't enough to endure, her husband, never really mature or stable, has begun an affair with Annie’s closest friend Louise and leaves her. Paul is soon diagnosed with cancer and expires shortly before she is diagnosed with a second cancer.

While Annie struggles, King is pursuing her belief that some forms of breast and ovarian cancer have a hereditary basis. While she captures headlines for her work applying DNA fingerprinting to help reunite "the disappeared" with their families in Argentina, her priority is to map the breast cancer gene. King focuses on collecting families with a particularly high incidence of breast cancer, suspecting that these cases are most likely to reveal any genetic predispositions. Advances in genetic mapping through the 1980s gradually allow her team to embark on studies to map the location of the BRCA1 gene. Finally, in 1990, King and her team find conclusive evidence linking DNA markers on chromosome 17 with an inherited flaw in a gene dubbed BRCA1. The work was presented at the American Society of Human Genetics conference in Cincinnati, and published in Science a short time later. [4]

Mary Claire King ended up on the cover of Time , and Anne Parker finally had the answer she herself had long sought. Annie Parker happily remarried, and a few years later contracted cancer for a third time. And survives again. And she laughed while being treated, for reasons only she knew and understood.

Cast

Production

The filming began in October 2011 and wrapped in November 2011. Post-production was completed in 2012.

Awards

2014 Milan International Film Festival

Release

The film was released domestically by Entertainment One Films simultaneously in theaters and video-on-demand on May 2, 2014.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penetrance</span> Proportion of individuals that express the trait associated with an allele

Penetrance in genetics is the proportion of individuals carrying a particular variant of a gene (genotype) that also expresses an associated trait (phenotype). In medical genetics, the penetrance of a disease-causing mutation is the proportion of individuals with the mutation that exhibit clinical symptoms among all individuals with such mutation. For example: If a mutation in the gene responsible for a particular autosomal dominant disorder has 95% penetrance, then 95% of those with the mutation will go on to develop the disease, showing its phenotype, whereas 5% will not. 

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BRCA1</span> Gene known for its role in breast cancer

Breast cancer type 1 susceptibility protein is a protein that in humans is encoded by the BRCA1 gene. Orthologs are common in other vertebrate species, whereas invertebrate genomes may encode a more distantly related gene. BRCA1 is a human tumor suppressor gene and is responsible for repairing DNA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samantha Morton</span> British actress (born 1977)

Samantha Jane Morton is an English actress. She is known for her work in independent film with dark and tragic themes, in particular period dramas and is the recipient of numerous accolades, including the BAFTA Fellowship, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award and nominations for two Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Malignant transformation is the process by which cells acquire the properties of cancer. This may occur as a primary process in normal tissue, or secondarily as malignant degeneration of a previously existing benign tumor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary-Claire King</span> American geneticist

Mary-Claire King is an American geneticist. She was the first to show that breast cancer can be inherited due to mutations in the gene she called BRCA1. She studies human genetics and is particularly interested in genetic heterogeneity and complex traits. She studies the interaction of genetics and environmental influences and their effects on human conditions such as breast and ovarian cancer, inherited deafness, schizophrenia, HIV, systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. She has been the American Cancer Society Professor of the Department of Genome Sciences and of Medical Genetics in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington since 1995.

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Hereditary breast–ovarian cancer syndromes (HBOC) are cancer syndromes that produce higher than normal levels of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and additional cancers in genetically related families. It accounts for 90% of the hereditary cancers. The hereditary factors may be proven or suspected to cause the pattern of breast and ovarian cancer occurrences in the family. The name HBOC may be misleading because it implies that this genetic susceptibility to cancer is mainly in women. In reality, both sexes have the same rates of gene mutations and HBOC can predispose to other cancers including prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer. For this reason, the term "King syndrome" has recently come into use. The new name references Mary-Claire King who identified the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Bernstein (filmmaker)</span>

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<i>BRCA</i> mutation Medical condition

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hereditary cancer syndrome</span> Inherited genetic condition that predisposes a person to cancer

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jórunn Erla Eyfjörð</span> Icelandic academic

Jórunn Erla Eyfjörð is an Icelandic molecular biologist and professor emerita at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Iceland. She is known for her research on breast cancer genetics.

Joan H. Marks was an American educator and genetic counseling advocate. She wrote several papers in support of the then-burgeoning field of genetic counseling and was the longest-serving director of Sarah Lawrence College's Human Genetic graduate program, the first of its kind in the United States.

Kelly A. Metcalfe is a Canadian scientist and a professor at the University of Toronto and at Women's College Hospital. Her work's focus is on understanding the clinical and psychosocial implications of genetic testing for BRCA gene mutations in women, men and their families.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Breast and ovarian cancer</span>

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References

  1. Samantha Highfill (2 May 2014). "Meet the woman behind 'Decoding Annie Parker'".
  2. King, M.; Wilson, A. (1975). "Evolution at two levels in humans and chimpanzees". Science. 188 (4184): 107–16. doi:10.1126/science.1090005. PMID   1090005.
  3. Davies, Kevin; White, Michael (1996). Breakthrough: The Race to Find the Breast Cancer Gene . New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   0-471-12025-1.
  4. Hall, J.; Lee, M.; Newman, B.; Morrow, J.; Anderson, L.; Huey, B.; King, M. (1990). "Linkage of early-onset familial breast cancer to chromosome 17q21". Science. 250 (4988): 1684–9. doi:10.1126/science.2270482. PMID   2270482.