Encouraged by the great success of all previous editions of FOM the next festival - FOM 2010 will be held at Chennai, India, between 1-3 October 2010. The film festival is part of the International Conference On Schizophrenia IConS IV scheduled to be held during the same time.
The competetive section seeks to counter negative, inaccurate and cliched images of people with mental illness. We invite film-makers, doctors and care-givers to create clean, accurate, realistic and optimistic short films (under 5 minutes) portraying what they believe is good mental health in their socio-cultural milieu.
The theme for FOM 2010 "Role of family in mental health/disorders"
Most of the mentally ill in India live with families who are the mian care givers for them. Families need a lot of information, education, training and support in the complex process of having to deal with a person with mental illness in the family. They also have to deal with social consequences such as stigma, isolation, rejection etc.
Family attitudes and emotions also play in critical role in the way persons with mental illness responds to treatment and care. Some families are hostile, some indifferent and some over protective. There is also sometimes, a conflict between attitudes of different members of the family.
The short film could portray any of these issues which highlight the positive/negative impact of families' attitudes/ expression of emotions/ coping with mental disorders. Any of the mental illnesses (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, drug abuse and alcoholism) can be selected for this purpose.
Films portraying mental retardation, alcoholism and drug abuse, and childhood disabilities such as autism will NOT qualify for the competition and will be excluded.