I recently had the privilege of going to a screening of “My Suicide,” an excellent new film doing the festival circuit and winning awards and much praise. The film won Best Picture in the Generation 14Plus category at the Berlin Film Festival, got great reviews at the South by Southwest Film Festival, and swept the awards at the NYC Gen Art Film Festival this month (where I saw the film) including the Grand Jury Award, Audience Favorite, and the Stargazer Award for lead actor Gabriel Sunday.
What struck me most was the raw, authentic youth voice permeating every aspect of the film: the excellent acting, the writing, the music, the animation sections, and most especially the incredibly relevant way in which the film presents the title issue and the stress, pressures, and influences facing young people today. This should come as no surprise: the team that created “My Suicide” along with Director David Lee Miller was composed largely of young people working with Regenerate Films, a non-profit whose mission is to amplify the voices of young people and produce media “By Youth – For Youth.”
The film (and the trailer, so I’m not giving much away here) begins with Archie, the main character played by Sunday, declaring that for his class project he will kill himself on camera. He then goes on to produce a visual representation of his life, filming himself, fellow students, his parents, and others. To build the tension and bring us into Archie’s world, the pace of the film is rapid and we are often looking at Archie and others through the lens of his own camera. In this way the audience gets a real close and unedited look at Archie’s life, and through that we begin to realize the extent to which media, school, parents, friends, and other pressures influence the lives of young people.
So often issues concerning young people are presented and very often dealt with by adults, without much or any involvement of young people themselves. While adults may be very well-meaning, the lack of youth voices in discussions and problem-solving about issues related to young people has several deep problems. To begin with, such lack of involvement denies young people of their right (asserted in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) to be involved in issues that concern them. They become alienated from adults and youth-serving organizations if they are denied a seat at the table. Indeed it is patronizing to think that young people can not or ought not be involved in issues concerning them. And practically, the ideas and solutions presented without youth involvement often lack relevance to what young people are actually going through. Young people are the experts on what it means to be young, and discussions involving them will lead to richer, more authentic, and more targeted solutions to improving the lives of youth.
(Much more on all this from my gurus on youth voice – Adam Fletcher, and the folks at Youth on Board, among other excellent groups).
Shortly before I saw “My Suicide” I had seen a screening for a film still in the early stages that was also about student stress and suicide. While the film had some good things going for it, I wasn’t at all taken in and gripped by the topic in the way I was with “My Suicide.” Partly I believe this is because the other film was the project of a (albeit very caring and passionate) parent creating a film about young people, and it came off with an adult perspective that I felt was removed from what young people actually go through. It was striking to then see “My Suicide” and realize how different the two films were while dealing with similar issues.
The importance of youth involvement and the pervasive lack of it in society is something I’ve thought about in terms of education, research, public policy, and societal improvement, and I’m glad to think about it now in terms of films and media. Kudos to everyone associated with “My Suicide,” here’s hoping it gets out there big-time.
If you’d like to see “My Suicide,” perhaps you live near one of the festivals they’ll be screening at in the near future:
April 24: Newport Beach Film Festival (southern CA)
May 1-6: San Francisco International Film Festival
May-June: Seattle International Film Festival