The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF) has announced the winners of its prestigious International Film Awards, celebrating bold and original filmmaking that explores mental health through lived experience and diverse global perspectives.
Held on Thursday 6 November at The Social Hub in Glasgow, the awards ceremony was hosted by acclaimed writer and director Raisah Ahmed, with the Grand Jury Prize presented by iconic Scottish actor and director David Hayman.
Selected by a jury of filmmakers, mental health professionals, and scholars, the winning films reflect the festival’s 2025 theme, Comfort & Disturb, and highlight the power of storytelling to challenge stigma and spark vital conversations around mental health.
David Hayman presented the Grand Jury Prize to the producer of the Norwegian film, DIAGNONSENSE, Øyvind Nyborg Gregersen. The film was directed by Ane-Martha Tamnes Hansgård who was unable to attend the ceremony.
David Hayman said:
Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s International Film Awards at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. It takes real courage to make work that confronts complex and painful experiences so directly and I commend these fantastic filmmakers for their beautiful and affecting work. These films show how art can help us process and better understand mental health, not just intellectually, but emotionally. That’s why sustained funding for people to make, participate in, and appreciate this kind of creative work is so vital – access to art shouldn’t be a luxury.
DIAGNONSENSE producer, Øyvind Nyborg Gregersen, said:
It’s such a surprise – I could not have imagined winning the film winning the Grand Jury Prize as the quality of all the films at the festival is so high. The jury must have really had a difficult time judging. I’m so looking forward to seeing the other films in full this weekend.
Three Scottish filmmakers were among the winners.
- Lipa Hussain won the Experimental Award for her film Roll Down the Window, a raw portrayal of racialised trauma and generational rage, told with bold honesty.
- The Personal Narrative award was presented to Marie Trestrail for her moving exploration of OCD and mental health in the film We Can Still Hear You.
- Theo Panagopoulos won the Short Drama award for The Key, a Scottish-Palestinian magical realist drama about personal and collective grief.
The winning films were screened as part of the SMHAF film programme.
Animation
A Time Before
Leo Metcalf
(UK, 2025) 12m
A mixed-media journey through childhood dreams and trauma.
This is an incredibly powerful and immersive short film that draws the viewer into a childhood experience of dreams, memories, and trauma. The use of mixed media creates a striking contrast between two worlds, resonating deeply with the festival’s theme of comfort and disturb and allowing us to feel the experiences alongside the filmmaker.
Gail Aldam
Mental Health Foundation
International FIlm Awards Jury
Anti-Stigma
My Dying Place
Loren Jalyn Kett
(New Zealand, 2025) 19m
A heartfelt documentary about trauma, healing, and joy in a remote coastal town.
My Dying Place is a short documentary about a life shaped by trauma – but what a wonderful life. Its protagonist Patrick lives in a ramshackle house in remote coastal town in New Zealand, surrounded by the animals he rescues and nurtures. First-time director Loren Jalyn Kett gently explores the painful memories that disturb him and the mental health challenges he has always faced, but emphasises the joy he takes in everything he has experienced and everyone he has lost and found. An extraordinary film, impossible not to love.
Rob Dickie
Mental Health Foundation
Film Curator
Community
Dreamscapes
Rachel Gray
(Canada, 2025) 13m
A vibrant, collaborative film celebrating mental health as strength and shifting inner reality.
Dreamscapes is an brisk and enthusing experiment expressing the inexplicabilities that go on in an complexly traumatised and injured head. An inclusive and creative collaboration between director Rachel Gray, performer Amelia Rose Griffin and the Ottawa based Ghost Rooster Collective, the film is bubbling over with vivid sound and colours, glamourous bodies, infecting joy and the invitation to acknowledge your mental health as strength and a shifting inner reality.
Dr Tobias Dietrich
Film Curator and Scholar
International FIlm Awards Jury
Experimental
Roll Down the Window
Lipa Hussain
(Scotland, 2024) 10m
A raw portrayal of racialised trauma and generational rage, told with bold honesty.
Roll Down the Window was the first time I witnessed the urgent and uncompromising honesty in telling a personal and collective story of racialised trauma. It’s a raw and unapologetic portrayal of the filmmaker’s open conversation that, for me, speaks to the rage carried through generations of dehumanisation. What a relief—what a necessary release—to see this told so boldly, with nothing held back.
Nina Abeysuriya
Tiny Changes
International Film Awards Jury
Grand Jury Prize & Feature Documentary
DIAGNONSENSE
Ane-Martha Tamnes Hansgård
(Norway, 2024) 1h 21m
A personal and critical reflection on psychiatric structures, blending narrative and archive.
DIAGNONSENSE drew me in from its very first frame. Through personal narrative and imaginative use of archive, the film invites the audience to connect a personal journey with a critical look at psychiatric structures. Created with raw honesty and a compassionate lens, the film encourages reflection without preaching, allowing viewers to feel, question, and reconsider what it truly means to live beyond a diagnosis.
Bircan Birol
Filmmaker
International FIlm Awards Jury
Personal
Narrative
We Can Still Hear You
Marie Trestrail
(Scotland, 2025) 10m
A moving exploration of OCD and mental health through layered visuals and voiceover.
I found We Can Still Hear You to be a powerful and raw documentary experience. Flitting between present day road trip footage, home video archive, and depictions of static, the film’s contradictions in style mirror the busy, restless mind in mental health struggles and OCD in particular. The filmmaker’s voice over provides a personal and emotional narrative that weaves the content together, but also raises wider, existential questions about nature/nurture and mental health.
Scott McPherson
Robert Gordon University
International Film Awards Jury
Short Documentary
Pirsas
Angélica María Torres Tamayo (Colombia, 2025) 15m
A poetic tribute to grief and healing following the loss of a loved one in the Andes.
Carefully crafted and powerfully poetic, Pirsas is dedicated to the filmmaker’s late brother, Junior, who lost his life in a natural disaster in the Colombian Andes. Angélica María Torres Tamayo and her mother retrace Junior’s last hike, exploring various manifestations of grief: raw pain, fading memories, silences, and separations. As mother and daughter ascend the mountain, they examine how loss impacted them differently. At the summit, the same elements that took a loved one away offer repair and connection.
Paola Debellis Alvarez
Filmmaker
International FIlm Awards Jury
Short Drama
The Key
Theo Panagopoulos
(Scotland, 2024) 13m
A magical realist meditation on diasporic grief, memory, and identity.
In The Key, Theo Panagopoulos has created an intimate, moving meditation on memory, grief, and identity. When Linda returns to her Glasgow childhood home after her estranged Palestinian father’s death, she is confronted – literally – by her 10-year-old self, who leads her through the echoes of a fractured past. Delicately balancing magical realism and a deeply human story, Panagopoulos captures the disorienting experience of diasporic grief and the way loss can reopen questions of belonging. Beautifully acted and delicately composed, The Key finds it’s magic in the tender, haunted spaces between generations.
Michael Lee Richardson
Mental Health Foundation
Festival Programmer
The International Film Awards jury were: Bircan Birol, Gail Aldam, Nina Abeysuriya, Paola Debellis Alvarez, Scott McPherson, and Dr Tobias Dietrich.
The International Film Awards are a cornerstone of SMHAF’s commitment to using the arts to promote mental health awareness and wellbeing. The Mental Health Foundation, which runs the festival, focuses on prevention of poor mental health, working to create a society where everyone can thrive and access to the arts plays a vital role.
Rob Dickie is an Arts Officer at the Mental Health Foundation and co-ordinated the film programme. Rob said:
This year’s International Film Awards have once again highlighted the depth, honesty and creativity of filmmakers engaging with mental health. The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival is proud to provide a platform for work that challenges stigma, invites empathy, and opens up space for reflection. These films are not just powerful pieces of art, they’re part of a wider cultural shift in how we talk about and understand mental health.
