Mental health is a vital issue, and it’s never too late, in these troubled times, to check on your own well-being and ask for help. And also to make sure others are okay, that we’re here to listen to and understand them. Like the protagonist of Sujip, receiving a call that suddenly becomes very personal at a suicide prevention helpline. Or like the bereaved actress in Manal Issa, 2024 in a bombed-out Beirut.

In Our Pantheons, we are tempted to ask those who insult and harass a tenacious archaeologist if they themselves need to speak to a therapist. Whether faced with sexual violence in tiny film about rape or painful grief within the Cape Verdean community in Portugal in Antigone, The Story of Sara Benoliel, these films are calls for empathy that is increasingly lacking these days. 

Finally, in Drifting, South, outcasts from diverse backgrounds in contemporary China find solace in each other beneath a fireworks display. As Leonard Cohen said: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Foreword by the programme curator: Films about mental health and how and why we should lend a hand to someone or at least listen carefully and courageously.