The Secret in Monet’s Garden unveils Claude Monet’s epic 31-year journey in painting and enveloping himself in the petals of his beloved garden’s water lilies to grapple with his grief over his beloved wife’s death. In this film, I reveal Monet’s simple science-backed solution of inviting more green spaces into our lives to ameliorate our mental health.
This submission is about being left out in a lot of things that other people would love to be apart of.
This PSA was about my character struggling with her mental health. She thought about how if she’s waiting for someone to notice and help, then maybe other people are waiting too. The best way for someone to help you is if you reach out first. When she looks at pictures of her friends she wonders if maybe they are going through something as well. As the camera pans to each person, we see and hear their stories that our main character would have never known. However, those people on their own reached out to someone they know and they were able to find help. She unknowingly was right about the chance of them having their own mental health struggles. It can be the people you least expect too. Because she understood that it is best, she chose to talk to her mom about her problems and was able to find the support she needed.
The character in the film is losing interest in his favorite hobby, something that many people, young and old, struggle with. He is losing his love for guitar, which scares him into a spiral; he wrestles with his weight and how he can share it, IF he can share it. Ultimately, he calls a friend and lifts the pressure off his shoulders.
When I first moved from Beijing to Palo Alto when I was seven, my classmates treated me like a pariah for being Chinese. Clearly, this was all because of the narcissism of small differences that humans create to mask their inferiority, but as a child, you don’t know why you’re an outcast. You just know you are.
I tried to fit in by changing the way I dressed, what I ate, and how I spoke. None of it worked. Over time, I became scared of people, but isolating myself made me extremely lonely. Drawing became a way to express myself when words felt too heavy. When I draw, I forget the pain — it’s like the world goes quiet, and I can finally breathe. I hope when people see my film, they realize that even when it feels like you’re stuck, invisible, and unheard, creating something can still give you hope.
Our film follows a young student who is silently struggling under mounting academic, social, and personal pressures. As expectations build, he begins to feel overwhelmed and isolated, which is visually represented through a powerful underwater scene that symbolizes the sensation of drowning. He expresses that he needs someone to notice him and reach out. At his lowest point, a friend recognizes the signs that something is wrong and makes the choice to step in. That simple act of reaching out becomes a turning point, showing that support and connection can make recovery possible for anyone. Our submission reflects the required content criteria by emphasizing the importance of being supportive and not waiting to get help. The film demonstrates how a caring friend can be there with emotional support. It reinforces the message that mental health challenges do not define a person and that recovery is possible, especially when someone feels seen and supported. Ultimately, our film encourages viewers to take action, check in on their friends, and understand that reaching out can truly save someone from feeling like they are drowning alone.
My submission is categorized in the mental health category, as it focuses on Chris as a teenager. Chris is looking back to an old box of childhood memories, when he stumbles across a drawing of himself as a superhero that he made back when he was a kid. He then reflects off of those memories, remembering when he would go off to the park and play pretend superhero. Going back to Chris in the present day, he feels as if he needs to keep playing “pretend” as he believes that being a superhero means you have to be there for others over yourself and that you always need to act like everything is okay, when in reality it’s not. But once Chris begins to open up about his mental health, he learns that it’s okay to stop playing pretend, and the more you open up to others about it, the more you grow from it. Leaving the viewers with a hopeful message of being sure to always open up about your mental health, as your health matters just as much as everyone else and that you shouldn’t ignore it.
One Step At A Time is a short film about the varying journeys we all have with our mental health. The usage of different footprints as symbolism in the film conveys the wide array of experiences we have with our mental health. Our film shows a girl who is struggling on a hike when she finds encouragement from another girl on the hike. It also shows how sometimes it may feel like your mental health is getting better, when all of a sudden, you find yourself back where you started. Even though they take different paths, they all make it to the same place, a healthy mental state. In the montage, we used different footsteps in different terrain to resemble different people’s paths and how everyone’s path with their mental health may be different. We hope that other students struggling with their mental health will feel seen, and understand that healing is not perfect.
Our submission is a story about a teenage girl going through thoughts of isolation and anxiety, thinking she is the only one. She writes her thoughts in her diary, but out of fear of sharing, she shoves her words into a jar. The jar becomes more and more filled overtime, as she succumbs to the pressure of needing to be perfect. Finally she shares and opens up to her friend, finally realizing she is not alone. She makes sense of her feelings with her friend by her side.
This film shows how stigma can prevent someone from reaching out. In the beginning, the main character feels something off about a friend’s behavior and thinks about checking in. However, she thinks about phrases such as “What if I’m wrong?” or “What if they don’t want to talk about it?”. Although, the main character wants to help a struggling friend, throughout the film, the viewer begins to realize that the main character is struggling as well. Ultimately, the friend that the main character suspects is struggling ends up being the one the reach out revealing that you don’t need to be “okay” or have everything figured out to check in. When people watch this PSA, I want them to understand that fear doesn’t have to stop you from caring, instead it can be the reason you choose the reach out and support someone else.