Dreams of a Life (2012)

Dreams of a Life is a drama-documentary film, released by Dogwoof Pictures in December 2011, and directed by Carol Morley. It tells the story of Joyce Carol Vincent the body of whom was found in January 2006 decomposing in her bedsit in Wood Green, North London; after apparently dying unnoticed in December 2003, surrounded by unopened Christmas presents with her TV still switched on.

Synopsis: Nobody noticed when thirty-eight year old Joyce Vincent died in her apartment above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. When her skeleton was discovered three years later, her television was still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of Joyce's life- not even a photograph. Who was Joyce Vincent? And how could this happen to someone in our day and age--the so-called age of communication? Dreams of a Life is Carol Morley's quest to discover who Joyce was and how she came to be so forgotten.

The film interviews various friends, acquaintances and former partners to try to tell the story of Joyce, who is played in reconstructions by actress Zawe Ashton.