Animated shorts are a powerful medium for addressing mental health issues, offering a unique and often visually compelling way to explore complex emotions and inner struggles. These films vividly depict experiences like anxiety, depression, trauma and personal growth, often capturing the nuance of these conditions in ways that words alone cannot. By destigmatising mental health struggles the films also serve as a valuable tool for raising awareness, fostering conversations and promoting understanding about emotional well-being. And apart from anything else – they will make you laugh and make you cry!
Several of the filmmakers will be in attendance after the screening to talk about these astounding and heart-felt films: Ruixue Peng, Robert Glassford, Kate Jessop and Sarah Gomes Harris.
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What Does it Feel Like to Have ADHD? – Robert Glassford, UK
My Dad’s name was Huw. He was an Alcoholic Poet – Freddie Griffiths, UK
An attempt to unravel the state of mind of the filmmaker’s late alcoholic father, through the poems he left behind.
2019 7’40 min
Paradise Man (II) – Jordan Michael Blake, USA
Paradise Man searches for meaning in an unknowable universe.
2025 12’10 min
Hole – Gil Goletski, Canada
Mo is an adult with autism spectrum disorder who spends a lot of time in their brain. Today, a hole started following them.
2018 6’00 min
Kinder than Cuts – Kate Jessop & Sarah Gomes Harris, UK
An AniJam protest against the devastating cuts to pip and disability benefits. Animators from across the UK created a 5-15 second piece each responding to the theme kindness against cuts.
2025 4’00 min
Hi! How are you? – Gaia Grandin Mendzylewski, France
‘We’ Are Not Different – Ruixue Peng, China / UK
A healing animation that explores the hidden feelings of people affected by self-harm, fostering compassion, understanding, and self-reconciliation while reminding us that pain and healing are universal human experiences.
2025 3’45 min
Dull Spots of Greenish Colour – Sasha Svirsky, Germany
The war for our attention has suddenly become an actual war. Information technologies appear not just as mere means for somebody’s ends – they are now a force unto themselves. We have no control over them and are doomed to scroll through the newsfeed.
2024 10’40 min
Floating – Jelena Milunović, Serbia
A daughter gradually realises that her father suffers from a mental illness. Isolated and rejected by society, he lives alone in a dark apartment, drifting like a balloon. She searches for a way to reconnect and bring him back down to earth.
2025 7’00 min
Our Funding Partners
With Special Thanks to The Elf Factory, official sponsor of LIAF 2025.
Event supported by Film Hub London, managed by Film London. Proud to be a partner of the BFI Film Audience Network, funded by the National Lottery.
Venue
The Horse Hospital is a three tiered progressive arts venue in London providing an encompassing umbrella for the related media of film fashion, music and art. For more information about The Horse Hospital and how to get there, find out more.
Horse Hospital, Online
