Mental Filmness

Hello all!

I promise this is what I intend to be the final post about the festival finale, and I will stop spamming your feed/inbox if you follow Mental Filmness in any subscription-type capacity.

Tomorrow I will announce voting results, so get all your votes in for the virtual festival and check back for that. Tomorrow I will probably say this again and elaborate on it a bit more, but this is the last year I intend to host a *virtual* festival. It was born out of necessity during the pandemic, and it has always been a bit of a logistical challenge to balance it with physical events once we started bringing those back. More than anything else I’ve just realized these kinds of films work much better with a conversation live in a room, and anything I’ve tried to replicate that in the virtual festival just hasn’t worked as well. What that means is hopefully more *live* screenings in the future.

Finally, I think we have touched upon all the films in the festival in some way except for one that I saved for last, which is Technical Fault. Technical Fault is a really incredible experimental short about a very important topic, the intersection between homelessness and mental health. Following the narration of an artist experiencing homelessness and borderline personality order, the film moves between animation and reality, between everyday life and memory in his work. The reflexive, poetic perspective opens up impressive insights into the realities of homeless and mentally ill people – and thus makes an important contribution to social understanding. It’s much better seen than described, so you should watch it in the next few hours here: Technical Fault | Shorts Block No. 1 | Mental Filmness 2025 Virtual Festival

The reason why I touched upon this topic is it dovetails with another *live* program in Chicago that will be happening November 22nd. We are once again partnering with the Disability Pride Committee of the Chicago Public Library to host a screening of Doug Shaffer’s 5000 Blankets, which is about the very relevant and timely topic of homelessness and mental health, during the season where it is most needed. See attached flyer below. Please attend if you can!

And enjoy the *final* final eve of the Mental Filmness virtual festival! Thank you for all your support!

Remember, this is the LAST night to watch films from the Mental Filmness virtual festival, and I am just going to highlight a couple more *short* films that you definitely have time to watch before it closes. And remember to get in those votes! We will definitely tally them up and post results.

As someone recently searching for medical care, I have heard the phrase “health anxiety” bandied around a lot. Hypochondria, fear of finding something medically wrong with you, or fear of death are all so common now as to have their own terminology. What Niels Fiegerslev’s Forever Dying touches upon so well is how physical and mental health tie together. Sometimes we almost *want* something to be wrong with us physically, so it can explain some more deep-rooted psychological problems.

Forever Dying has elements of dark comedy in its main subject becoming increasingly anxious in a sterile waiting room to see a doctor, while a mysterious boil grows on him. In the clever way it ties physical and mental health together, this character’s anxiety presents as nothing to be overly concerned about to the other patients and the doctor. My favorite part of this metaphor comes in the end though, where I feel the film delivers its ultimate message from the doctor: if you don’t treat the underlying condition itself, the outward manifestation of it won’t go away.

There’s still time to watch Forever Dying in Shorts Block No. 2, and to VOTE by 10 p.m. Central tonight! Forever Dying | Shorts Block No. 2 | Mental Filmness 2025 Virtual Festival

There’s a mere matter of hours to watch what you can in the virtual festival and vote vote vote! And at the end, there will be a Chicago announcement! I am going to highlight a couple more short films that you definitely have time to check out before the final votes are in!

I feel badly it’s taken so long to get around to highlighting Alway Enough, because the creative team behind it (Regina Oliver & Keegan Jones) is so obviously passionate about their film, this festival, and mental health. It sounds like it is picking up some steam in the festival circuit so you will probably still have chances to see it, but you can see it here for FREE right now!

Always Enough is a highly dreamlike and symbolic film about mental health, generational trauma, and quiet resilience. I feel like it strikes a very good balance between being a more experimental art film with its use of bare-bone visuals to convey its message, with enough of its story being delivered in a haunting voice-over monologue to appeal to the more narrative-oriented viewer. Still, there’s enough left to interpretation in the imagery of a flickering television, a mirror, and the bandaged wounds of past trauma to carry its tone-poem about self-image and self-acceptance on a parallel track to the delivered words. With the many more surreal, experimental art films we received this year, I feel like this is one that has some of the broadest audience appeal.

You still have some time to watch Always Enough in Shorts Block No. 4 of the virtual festival: Always Enough | Shorts Block No. 2 | Mental Filmness 2025 Virtual Festival

And you can still cast your virtual vote until 10 p.m. Central tonight!

Hello! Today is the last day to watch the Mental Filmness 2025 virtual festival, through 10 p.m. Central time this evening 11/2. There are so many gems and there may even be a couple more interviews and reviews coming, so watch what you can and remember to vote on your favorites before it closes out (we will announce winners). Plus, we will have an announcement for another Chicago event very soon!

First, I’d like to highlight the graceful and tragic, yet uplifting Romanian short film Ofem, directed by Ciprian Ioan Iacob. A parent’s loss of a child is a painful and raw topic. This brave film, with its nearly flawless cinematography and visuals, committed performances, and realistic scenes of therapy and processing grief, rises to the challenge of tackling this subject matter in a sensitive and even beautiful way.

Especially the first part of Ofem can be difficult to watch because of the immersive experience of the mother’s grief, but I encourage the audience to stick with it to the therapeutic breakthroughs, which feel just as powerful. There is also an ending monologue about what makes a great mother, wherein the character accepts what happened to her, that made me cry while also making me feel I should be accepting of the flaws within myself. It’s a little deeper and darker but incredibly rewarding, so for a film that will truly move you I highly recommend Ofem.

You can still watch the short film Ofem for FREE from now through 10:00 p.m. Central time this evening in the virtual festival: Ofem | Shorts Block No. 3 | Mental Filmness 2025 Virtual Festival

Cast a virtual ballot, and tell us what YOU think!

As the virtual festival winds down, I thought I’d highlight a quiet, sweet film that I think is one of the more feel-good entries. The focus of Morten Hansen’s Dolldays is men’s mental health, and its setting in a small and slow village in Norway is a part of that story. Everybody knows everybody else, which makes it difficult to openly discuss their feelings. As what seems like an absurd preventative measure, a ventriloquist teaches men in the village how to use puppets to express the emotions that are difficult for the men to speak aloud. Surprisingly, this form of puppet therapy actually works and encourages honest conversations between the men in the program.

Two central characters in the film are a father and his son, who has expressed disappointment for a long time that they can’t speak about their mother’s death. Dolldays shows how important it is not to sweep these uncomfortable conversations under the rug, and to literally face our feelings. There is one scene I love that is representative of the whole film in a way, where two men are fishing and talking to each other while their puppets lie behind them. The dolls may have been useful initially to as a way to voice suppressed thoughts, but they soon carry over into having a very real impact on the lives of the patients. We’ve probably all seen or heard of therapists using dolls or puppets with kids as an outlet for what they find hard to say, but there’s something tender and heartwarming about seeing it work for grown men.

There’s still some time to watch Dolldays playing for FREE in Shorts Block No. 2: Dolldays | Shorts Block No. 2 | Mental Filmness 2025 Virtual Festival

And don’t forget to vote before the festival ends! Cast your virtual ballot, and let us know what YOU think!

We were lucky enough to have Rinoj Varghese, a hard-working new jury member who is also a filmmaker, interview Alvaro Garcia, the mastermind behind the short film My Memories. This film truly is *short*—about five minutes long—so you definitely have time to watch it on this last weekend of the virtual festival.

Rinoj makes a very good point here, which is that My Memories works regardless of what language it’s in. It’s amazing that in only five minutes Alvaro Garcia could pack so many deep ideas into this sci-fi mental health film. My Memories is a meditation on corporate control and ownership of our memories as well as a melancholy exploration of the mental toll of beginning to lose our memories, both on ourselves and those who care for us. Like my favorite science fiction, it uses the near future as a way to explore our present psychological problems.

You still have time to watch the short short My Memories in the virtual festival for FREE through tomorrow evening, 11/2: My Memories | Shorts Block No. 1 | Mental Filmness 2025 Virtual Festival

Cast your virtual ballot, and let us know what YOU think!

Michele Beck’s Learning to Speak is a personal documentary about the most literal form of art therapy. After her father’s death, Michele revisits the open psychiatric hospital where she spent three and a half years following a suicide attempt in her early twenties. Although Michele lets herself feel the pain of this experience, and in fact that is part of the point of the journey, she channels that pain and transforms it into expressive forms of art, including drawings as well as found-object sculptures.

Intrepid jury member and interviewer Beatrice Wong gets deep with Michele, discussing the importance of morning pages, art therapy, and community. Though technology may separate us at times, communicating through art, and Zoom interviews for Mental Filmness, can bring us together.

The lovely music in this video is attributed to Yuhang.

You still have one more weekend left to watch Learning to Speak for FREE in the virtual festival: Learning to Speak | Mental Filmness 2025

Cast your virtual ballot, and tell us what YOU think!

Rounding out the Youth in Mental Health Shorts Block, Nuestro Apoyo is a short film that is fairly straightforward in terms of its filmmaking craft, but stands out for its performances and the importance of its topic. Crafted by Latina filmmaker Maya Velazquez, the film is about a Latina teenager who is struggling with her mental health and wants to seek help. However, due to a deeply entrenched cultural stigma in Latine communities, her parents are firmly opposed to the idea.

Nuestro Apoyo tackles topics that are similar to another short in the youth mental health block, Saisha: that of how intergenerational stigma in families is passed on until the cycle is eventually broken, and how teenagers lack agency over their own mental health. Without the help of their parents, teens cannot access many resources for their own mental health, which leaves them at the mercy of their parents’ decisions. In Nuestro Apoyo, thankfully, the cycle of stigma seems to be weakening one particular family’s aversion to therapy, but it’s important to recognize that the vital message of this film lies in showing how strong that cycle still persists—until someone decides to break it. And yes, Nuestro Apoyo had a conventional narrative and ended on a perhaps too optimistic note, but I still found it incredibly effective in conveying its message, and it still made me cry. Using a formula that isn’t broken to tell an emotionally impactful and overlooked story still works.

You can still watch Nuestro Apoyo in Shorts Block No. 4 (the Youth in Mental Health Shorts Block) for FREE through 11/2: Nuestro Apoyo | Shorts Block No. 4 – Youth In Mental Health | Mental Filmness 2025 Virtual Festival

Cast your virtual vote, and tell us what YOU think!

It seemed appropriate to preface the short film title “Watching” with the name of Sullivan Styles, its 21-year-old writer-director-composer-cinematographer. However, that is not just because otherwise the title would seem confusing–it is because obviously, without Sullivan Styles’ life and unique vision, the poems, music, and personality behind this film would not exist.

The quasi-documentary Watching has a novel concept behind it, in which Sully attempts to translate his old notebooks from freshman year to convey what his depression and suicidal ideation felt like then. The film runs astray of this goal a bit and ventures into stand-up and musical territory, but I didn’t really mind. Sullivan Styles as a whole is a talented wordsmith and tunesmith, and I was willing to follow him down the rabbit hole. A good reason to call this film Watching is it becomes very difficult to look away from Sully’s extremely intimate and honest self-portrait, including candid conversations with his therapist and even a moment where he confesses his suicidal thoughts to his mother.

With its painfully honest moments Watching does feel a little voyeuristic at times, but in a healthy way where it is both cathartic for Styles and relatable to many viewers who have struggled with their mental health.

You can “watch Watching” in the virtual festival’s Shorts Block No. 4, the Youth in Mental Health Shorts Block, for FREE from now through 11/2: Watching | Shorts Block No. 4 – Youth In Mental Health | Mental Filmness 2025 Virtual Festival

Cast your virtual ballot, and tell us what YOU think!

Yet another wonderful returning jury member is Danielle Gibson, who also brings a special point of view as a filmmaker herself. Here she interviews the young filmmaker Sophie Martinez, the creative force behind the realistic short film and Yesterday and Today and Tomorrow. There’s a reason the film feels so realistic: it’s lifted almost verbatim from Sophie’s stay in a residential mental health treatment facility. It includes one of the most true-to-life depictions of a panic attack I’ve ever seen, but that uncomfortable moment is outbalanced by far by the camaraderie of the female friendship in the film and the portrayal of hope and recovery in treatment. And Sophie would like you to know that is what the title and Yesterday and Today and Tomorrow means: in a sense, it could mean that it’s hard work to get through today and tomorrow, and it is. However, the way Sophie sees the title, it means that there’s yesterday and today, but there’s also tomorrow—and tomorrow could be better than today.

Check out this insightful interview with Danielle and Sophie below. And make sure to watch and Yesterday and Today and Tomorrow (and the rest of the Youth in Mental Health Shorts Block), still live and FREE through 11/2: and Yesterday and Today and Tomorrow | Shorts Block No. 4 – Youth In Mental Health | Mental Filmness 2025 Virtual Festival

Cast your virtual ballot, and let us know what YOU think!