Last night’s Cutting Edge film was a powerful, sad and evocative insight into what happens when someone goes missing. The entire programme was made by Zoe Callan – from filming to directing to providing comfort to those she filmed – and it was all the better for it. After all, having someone go missing must be one of the most devastating things that can happen to those who love them so it seemed somehow appropriate that Callan kept the ‘crew’ to the bare minimum.

These people’s lives have been turned upside down and everything about them examined by police in their efforts to trace whoever’s gone missing, so further intrusion by dozens of film folk wouldn’t have seemed right, and Callan got the balance just right; we saw raw emotion, exasperation, fear, hard police work made harder by incompetence and the terrible bewilderment when someone goes missing and of course the inevitable, why?

It’s a shocking fact that some 300 people are reported missing every week in Greater Manchester alone and although most of them turn up, some of them don’t; it’s the same up and down the country and when someone goes missing, the first 72 hours are vital to the police. If the person isn’t found within that time, it becomes less likely they ever will be… Read more & comment »