Phone Calls and Car Rides is a youth-made film that captures youth grappling with mental illness from a few different angles. This short drama addresses the way mental health crises break up families, the way people gossip about it in a small town, and the way the adults in the teenage protagonist’s life are looking for signs that he won’t end up like his father, who recently returned home from a mental hospital. The performances really make or break a grittily realistic dramatic short like this and they are strong all across the board. Set in 2008 during the housing crisis, economic collapse is also present in the background as a metaphor for the havoc that mental health can wreak on the social community of the American family and town.
In Phone Calls and Car Rides, the young writer and director Josh Whiteaker taps into adolescent feelings and nostalgic Americana in an authentic love letter to the classic coming-of-age film, with a mental health twist.
Phone Calls and Car Rides plays Friday evening, 10/9, at Mental Filmness.
Get your free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/mental-filmness-54312030423
