We’re thrilled to announce the filmmakers and special guests who will join us for our Focus on Film programme at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, running from 6-9 November in Glasgow.

These filmmakers will join us for thought-provoking conversations and share the stories behind their films, their creative processes and their diverse perspectives on mental health.  

Feature Documentaries

SMHAF 2025 features three bold new international feature documentaries, including two UK premieres! Each of these features will be preceded by a short film made in Scotland.

DIAGNONSENSE

In the raw and intensely personal DIAGNONSENSE, director Ane-Martha Tamnes Hansgård uses an extensive collection of private archive to interrogate her own experiences.

The film will be preceded by We Can Still Hear You, an intimate short documentary about filmmaker Marie Trestrail’s experiences with OCD.

DIAGNONSENSE producer and contributor Øyvind Nyborg Gregersen and We Can Still Hear You director Marie Trestrail will join us at the festival.

Chasing the Light

Irish director Maurice O’Brien, until recently based in Scotland, will join us for a Q&A following the UK Premiere of his hopeful and inspiring documentary Chasing the Light on Saturday 8 November.

Set amongst the spiritual community of West Cork, Ireland, the film centre on a spiritual retreat based on the tenets of the Tibetan Buddhist faith.

Chasing the Light will be preceded by Sphagnum, a poetic, experimental short film set in the peatlands of West Yorkshire and Finland’s Teijo National Park. Filmmaker Lewis Landini and writer and producer Anne Caldewell will also join us for the discussion.

Palestine Comedy Club

The festival will close with a screening of Palestine Comedy Club, following six Palestinian comedians as they bring their unique lived experience and distinct perspective to life under occupation.

Palestine Comedy Club will be preceded by Theo Panagopoulos’s short film The Key, a Scottish-Palestinian magical realism film about personal and collective grief.

Palestine Comedy Club producer Charlotte Knowles and The Key actor Firas Ibrahim will join us to talk about the film.

Shorts Programmes

Our programme also features a diverse selection of short films, with curation inspired by our festival theme Comfort & Disturb.

There’s Comfort in Community

There’s Comfort in Community (Friday 7 November) is a programme exploring human connections and collective resilience. We’re delighted to be joined by contributors from Project Ability and In Cahootz (Paths), Nuala Kenny from Bridge Street Community Cafe (Heartbeats of Hope), as well as filmmakers Lea Luiz De Oliviera (What It Means To Be) and Miguel Gutierrez (Men-Tal), and musician Callie Rose Petal (What It Means To Be).

Unique Perspectives

Blending performance, archive, poetry and surreal images, Unique Perspectives (Friday 7 November) is a bold selection of shorts that explore identity and offer insight into lives often left at the margins. Filmmakers Zoe Elston (Stripped), Lipa Hussain (Roll Down the Window) and Olive Jones (See and Don’t See) will join us for a post-screening discussion.

Home Comforts

Home Comforts (Friday 7 November) invites us to look closer at the spaces we inhabit and inherit, questioning how they shape who we become. It includes the World Premiere of National Theatre of Scotland produced drama Kinaara (Edge) directed by Kal Sabir, which highlights the lack of understanding of dementia in South Asian communities and the silent suffering of unpaid carers.

We’re delighted to be joined by filmmakers from all the films featured in the programme, including Conor McCormick and Lorcan O’Hanlon (Bunker Baby), Marcelo Rodrigues and Marius Boettcher (Hummus), Meg Wriggles (Mother’s Influence), Mhari Sibeth and Andrew Gregory (Of All the Things), Kal Sabir (Edge) and Loren Jalyn Kett (My Dying Place).

Disturbances

Reframing and reflection are the order of the day as ordinary lives are disrupted in Disturbances (Saturday 8 November). We’ll be joined by directors Fibi Cowley (The Figure in the Carpet), James Crang (First Contact) and Charles Strider (A Glass House).

Psychogeographies

Psychogeographies (Saturday 8 November) takes us on journeys through complex landscapes shaped by trauma, grief and conflict. Director Leo Metcalf (A Time Before), producer Jonathan Akkawi (The Call) and composer Ben Rowarth (Return) will join us for the screening. 

Special Events 

For the first time, we’re delighted to have a moving image installation in the CCA Gallery throughout the festival and host a workshop at The Social Hub for filmmakers of all levels who are interested in films work about mental health.

Grey Milk & Lost Kin

In Grey Milk & Lost Kin (Friday 7 & Saturday 8 November), artist filmmaker Wilma Stone crafts an imaginary world of her hidden ancestral lineage in the Gypsy/Traveller communities of Scotland.

The film is an evocative act of reclamation, a bearing witness to what has been lost and what still endures and calls out to us to be made real, to be remembered, and to be named.

We’re excited that Wilma Stone will join us for an artists talk at 11am on Saturday 8 November.

Film in Mind

Film in Mind founder and psychotherapist Rebecca Day invites filmmakers to engage with practical, ethical and intellectual questions about how to integrate mental health considerations into the filmmaking process in a small, intimate workshop on Friday 7 November.