Unique Perspectives

From snow-peaked mountains to surreal dreamscapes, this programme brings together a bold selection of shorts that explore identity, and offer insight into lives often left at the margins.

Blending performance, archive, poetry and surreal images, these films blur the lines between internal and external worlds, making visible that which is often hidden by stigma or silence, and reminding us that every body carries a story.

About the Programme

Kopala d. Hugh Francis Anderson, Vetle Sevild (Norway, 2024) 32m

In Arctic Norway’s Kvænangen mountains, snowboarder Krister Kopala prepares for a dangerous first descent. Driven by childhood trauma, he finds refuge in the mountains. Is he seeking presence and life, or a way to be closer to death?


Dreamscapes d. Rachel Gray (Canada, 2025) 13m

A genre-blurring experimental film exploring mental health as a shifting inner reality – painful, beautiful, glamorous and strange. Centring a powerful performance by Amelia Rose Griffin, the film transforms her lived experience into movement, colour, and sound, giving voice to experiences often hidden through shame, stigma and silence.


Stripped d. Zoe Elston (UK, 2023) 15m

Esoteric visuals and archive material provide the backdrop for a conversation between two sisters as they reflect on the experience and impact of hospitalisation. Stripped highlights how a person’s identity as patient might interfere with their sexuality and their experiences of sexual intimacy.


See and Don’t See d. Olive Jones (Scotland, 2024) 5m

Through spoken word and dreamlike imagery, and an ethereal score featuring sounds of the body and placenta, the voices and experiences of single mothers are given space in this intimate and deeply personal experimental short, challenging stereotypical portrayals.


Tank d. Garath Whyte (UK, 2024) 3m

A young woman is placed on display in a tank in this surreal trip into the internal struggles of someone living with chronic illness. The journey emphasises the importance of compassion and understanding for invisible illness.


Roll Down the Window d. Lipa Hussain (Scotland, 2024) 10m

Alice In Wonderland syndrome causes the sensation of shrinking and losing bodily control. Filmmaker Lipa Hussain interrogates the neurological condition she has experienced since childhood and the parallels it represents with her own religious and racial struggles.

SMHAF 2025: Comfort & Disturb

Our theme, Comfort & Disturb, references the famous Cesar A Cruz quote that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”. It is a simple expression of the power of art both to challenge and to console, often having a transformative effect on people and societies. The theme was collectively chosen by SMHAF’s team of regional coordinators, along with the arts team from the Mental Health Foundation. Across Scotland, hundreds of programme events have been developed in response to this powerful theme.