The results are in for the 2024 Mental Filmness Virtual Festival awards! It seems like we received way less votes than usual, so perhaps I should have reminded people they could vote, including on each individual short, and how to do it—though it’s not really what’s most important, it’s kind of fun.
When The Rain Falls In Baden-Baden – This was a clear audience favorite and I figured it would be. Every single frame of this Italian short film directed by Alessandro Soetje is beautiful and gorgeously shot, and the ending is a surprising tearjerker. The story itself is a clever riff on the poetic art film Last Year At Marienbad, but if you’ve seen that film, this one takes the nature of memory in a much more loving and bittersweet, though still melancholy, direction. In terms of mental health it speaks to aging, dementia, and memory loss in a graceful way. However, I do not think this film is very realistic. It is more of a romantic fairy tale, but I’ve learned that great films about mental health do not have to be realistic or explicit to communicate something relevant and poignant about the topic. Thus, I think this film is befitting of the Audience Award, as it probably had the most mass appeal to an audience out of any film in the virtual festival this year, and that was reflected in the voting.
On the flip side, one thing that really surprised me is how high writer-director Oliver Granillo’s A Silent Scream ranked in the voting. Here is a film I thought was extremely important and realistic, but one that might be a difficult watch for an audience at times. Namely because a good portion of the film follows a suicidally depressed individual sobbing and alone, reaching out on the phone for help. I loved that this individual was a Latino man, cutting through some important stereotypes about men’s mental health and machismo. What I probably loved the most, however, is that I had been in the same place as the main character at one point in my life, suicidally depressed and clinging to any person and lifeline I could, and it felt so shockingly accurate as to what I experienced at that time. Re-living it was both painful and healing knowing I wasn’t alone. I’m happy its raw vulnerability resonated with others as well. I am torn about whether to give this film the Stigma Breaker or Realism Award, because it seems like an appropriate fit for both. However, I am going with the Stigma Breaker award just in light of comparison with the other two films that ranked up there with it, and because I feel like its depiction of men’s mental health was the biggest stigma-breaker by far this year.
The Canadian documentary My Dad’s Tapes connected with a lot of viewers, and I think that is because it is a film that completely lets downs its guard. Even further, it breaks down barriers and guards the filmmaker Kurtis Watson’s family had put up around discussing his father’s suicide. Through a combination of home video footage and vulnerable interviews, a portrait of Kurtis’s father emerges, though there will never be answers or closure as to why he took his life. Still, My Dad’s Tapes shows how important it is to de-stigmatize suicide and how we keep people alive through our shared collective memory. For its gritty exploration of a real family’s grief and healing, My Dad’s Tapes, made by Kurtis Watson and Rob Viscardis, seems like a natural fit for this year’s Realism Award.
Our other high-ranking film this year was the short film Reya’s World directed by the talented young filmmaker Isabella Sri Montana from the United Kingdom. Again this was a bit of a surprise to me as even though I felt like it was one of the most spot-on depictions of major cyclical depression I’ve ever seen, I wasn’t sure if it would connect with every viewer. The film has a dark blue tint and fuzziness that never lifts. White noise, constant hiss, and murky speech tap into the experience of depression for young Reya, who is sleepwalking through her life. Disconnected shots of dirty dishes stacked up, falling asleep in front of a staticky screen, listening to someone give advice about jogging or meditating, are all part of the picture. My feeling about this film is that most people who have experienced major clinical depression will see themselves in it. However, for those who haven’t I hope it can give them a sense of what it feels like in a genuine sensory, tactile way. For that reason I think that this film is deserving of the Empathy Award.
Thanks to the audience for voting, congratulations to the award-winning filmmakers, and congratulations to the selected filmmakers and all those who submitted! This was a fantastic year.
