It was a documentary which stopped people in their tracks and forced them to listen. The harrowing stories of heroin addicts in Swansea were laid bare over the course of an hour as people watching were introduced first-hand to the drug culture that existed in the city.
Edgy lifestyle magazine Vice and VBS.TV rolled into south Wales back in 2009, aiming to lift the lid on the hidden lives of many young people, showing how they were balancing their addictions and personal lives without money or shelter, and explaining at the time how official figures had seen a 178% jump in registered heroin users over the past four years. Their film revealed a startling situation where bags of the deadly drug could be bought for as little as £10 a time and the rising numbers selling it on the streets could make up to £1,500 a day. You can read more about that by clicking here.
The documentary was filmed by Andy Capper and Leo Leigh to show how those in such desperate situations actually ended up that way. The film’s central couple, homeless lovers Amy and Cornelius, whose sad back-story began when she – having been hooked on drugs and put to work in a massage parlour by her mum at the age of 14 – recently lost their baby. That tragedy turned them both into alcoholics. You can get more Swansea news and other story updates by subscribing to our newsletters here.
READ MORE: Nearly 70 drug dealers arrested in huge covert crackdown on Cardiff's Class A drug trade
Thirteen years on from the making of the acclaimed documentary, which is still talked about in the city to this day, we found Mr Capper in Los Angeles. The filmmaker has gone on to achieve a very successful career, but he admitted Swansea Love Story would always stand out in his mind as one of his most important pieces of work. He reflected on how it all came to be.
He said: "There was a very good photographer called Adam Patterson, and he had been doing a photo essay in Swansea concerning a heroin epidemic. Leo Leigh and I were super naïve and thought let's just grab a camera and go down there - we were desperate to go film something. I had some connection to the subject matter through friends. We went down there and Adam introduced us to the harm reduction place, and within 20 minutes we had found the people for the documentary, and decided to stay there for a week and follow them around.
"It only really took five to ten days of filming max - the whole thing - because these characters were so compelling and open. There was a lot of sweetness amongst them despite how dark and awful it was. There was humour too. I don't think the story was about Swansea, it was more about these people. It just happened to be there.
"As soon as we got there we found all this stuff as soon as getting out of the car. It wasn't as if we were scouring Swansea trying to find the bad things about Swansea, it was almost their version of Swansea rather than the overall picture. I'm sure the tourist board didn't love it, but it probably didn't harm the place in many ways."
Mr Capper explained how he and Mr Leigh were surprised how "out in the open" the drug taking was, but added that the true crux of the documentary went far deeper than just exposing how freely the drug would be found on city streets at the time.
He said: "It told stories of generational trauma. I think these days we look at these situations like this and we're more educated about addiction. Things happen to people, there's genetics and there's experiences and trauma that has been passed down. The main MO for me at the time was to show the back stories of the people that you turn your nose up at when they're walking down the street - people who do shoplifting are bad people and so on. It was about people having sympathy - we're all going through it in different ways and people have different ways of dealing with it."
South Wales Police's chief superintendent at the time, Mark Mathias, responding to the documentary back then, said it had always been acknowledged that there was a “significant substance misuse problem in Swansea ", but that a great deal of work was being done to tackle it. He said that between April, 2008, to March, 2009, 150 drug warrants had been executed, and more than 600 seizures made. But it appeared that it brought about a crackdown on drug users, as we reported in March, 2010, when a police community support officer said that it had "brought up a lot of questions from the top", adding: “I know it’s an issue which is being investigated at a high level."
Operation Avignon was launched partly in response to the documentary, and saw 25 people jailed by Judge Peter Heywood, who said selling highly addictive heroin was a “filthy trade”. You can read more about that by clicking here.
Mr Capper reflected: "We had a lot of good reviews and a lot of people watched it. In the end there was a story that the police had watched it, and then just arrested everyone in the city centre. I felt really bad about that - like we were responsible for it - but maybe some people got clean having been in a jail cell for a couple of nights, who knows.
"I'm really grateful to everyone who was part of it. Pride is a tricky thing, especially when you're filming a lot of ugliness, and people suffering. It was satisfaction that we got it done, it was one of the first things we did. I'm happy that a lot of people watched it and could see it for what it was, which was meant to be showing beyond your regular perception of someone who is a drug addict. That's what I'm most happy about and that's the effect we wanted.
"It's one of the best things that I've done easily. I am very fond of that film. The main objective behind that movie was compassion and I hope that is what people take out of it. Compassion always leads to some better solution than I am against you, you are against me. We live in such a divided society right now, it's just sad, but if you look at everyone with the mindset that everybody is going through it, and everyone is dealing with their own stuff, and put a lens of compassion in front of everything, it helps to manoeuvre all this stuff easier."
According to ONS figures, in 2020, 4,561 deaths related to drug poisoning were registered in England and Wales - an equivalent to a rate of 79.5 deaths per million people. This is 3.8% higher than the number of deaths registered in 2019, 4,393 deaths; 76.7 deaths per million. Swansea had the highest rate in Wales for deaths related to drug misuse between 2016 and 2018. This was the second highest across England and Wales - only Blackpool was higher. You can read more about that by clicking here.
Mr Capper explained how he was due to release a new documentary filmed in Los Angeles called People Like You, which follows similar themes of drug addiction. You can watch the trailer for that by clicking here. He considered what could be done by society to improve things in future.
"In America, the drug and mental health epidemic is absolutely shocking - there doesn't seem to be any empathy or sympathy for all these people suffering and the overdose rate has gone through the roof. Fentanyl killed more young people than cancer and Covid combined last year," he said.
"Like I was saying with Swansea and the generational trauma of an addiction epidemic, we see the situation is completely misunderstood. Look at people like Amy or Cornelius who were looked down on because people didn't understand what they were going through. They don't understand the pain or where it all comes from. That's one of the reasons we made it. I think it is a very important topic.
"I have no faith in the institutions whatsoever to do anything constructive. There needs to be more focus on mental health and addiction and there needs to be earlier screening - is this child likely to develop addiction issues? Is this child likely to develop mental health? We screen for autism pretty well these days but we don't screen for mental health and addiction which is probably one of the biggest problems in society. We all need to have a better understanding of the problems we're all going through and view everything with a lens of compassion."
- Did you feature in the film Swansea Love Story? We would like to chat to you about your memories of the documentary and how life has been since. Get in touch with us by e-mailing rob.dalling@walesonline.co.uk
