SMHFF To Premiere Online 10 Short Films on Mental Health/Dementia by Young Singaporeans2 min read

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The Singapore Mental Health Film Festival (SMHFF) is the nation’s first film festival dedicated to challenge the stigma of mental health and illnesses. One vital group of individuals the festival hopes to reach is youths. As part of the festival, SMHFF works with young filmmakers, inviting them to work with film industry experts and mental health/dementia agencies to create films on 5 areas of mental health. For the 2020 edition, the focuses were on: youth mental health, suicide & depression, caregivers, dementia and creative expressions.

The winning short film will be screened on the Opening Night of the next Singapore Mental Health Film Festival. Additionally, it will be screened at the New York City Mental Health Film Festival (New York, USA)
and Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival (Toronto, Canada).

“By providing our youth with the platform to create impactful short films, the festival hopes to understand their personal visions of how we can challenge the stigma of mental health in Singapore,” said Cheryl Tan, Festival Director of SMHFF and Founder of The Breathe Movement, the social organisation behind the festival.

In the National Youth Council’s youth research and Youth Action Plan engagements, they have experienced an increasing awareness of mental health amongst youth but their desire to move to more actionable peer-led interventions and practical inclusive behaviours that they can practise.

SMHFF Short Film Youth Competition 2020 is supported by the National Youth Council, Jardine Matheson Group of companies and MINDSET Care Limited.

View the full list of films here.

The Singapore Mental Health Film Festival, which was supposed to run in late February 2020, will be postponed to a later date due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

To continually engage with the audiences, SMHFF continues to run social media campaigns on Instagram and Facebook, inviting individuals to share their personal stories anonymously of their struggles with mental health during Covid-19, and what they wish others would know about them. The festival runs online Netflix parties with curated workshops and panel discussions to enable audiences to understand the importance of and building resilience for mental health.

Register your interest with the competition’s premiere and awards ceremony here.