Psychology

Driven by a desire to understand why her best friend killed herself at 16, Jacqueline Monetta asks teens to share their struggles with mental illness and suicide attempts. Through her intimate teen-to-teen conversations, Jacqueline, and the audience learn about depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicide attempts, getting help and treating mental illness. Each teen paints a vivid picture of the depths of despair he/she suffered and how talking about it saved them. They assure the audience that mental illnesses, like physical illnesses, can and should be treated.

That Which I Love Destroys Me is a unique and powerful film by director Ric Roman Waugh. TWILDM is an uncensored look at the current epidemic of PTSD and severe mental trauma that create tremendous challenges for returning service members. A five-year labor of love, TWILDM followed two Special Operations Soldiers as they returned home after fighting.

Featuring the heartbreaking stories of students across the country who have been pushed to the brink by over-scheduling, over-testing and the relentless pressure to achieve, “Race to Nowhere” points to a silent epidemic in our schools. Through the testimony of educators, parents and education experts, it reveals an education system in which cheating has become commonplace; students have become disengaged; stress-related illness, depression and burnout are rampant; and young people arrive at college and the workplace unprepared and uninspired.

In the early 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram, in seeking to understand the Holocaust, ran a series of controversial experiments on obedience. An authority figure orders you to inflict pain on another person by activating electric shocks. Most of us will obey, claimed Milgram. But will we? And were Milgram’s experiments as much art as science? Dramatising previously un-filmed versions of the world’s most famous psychology experiment, SHOCK ROOM turns a light on the dark side of human behavior and forces us to ask ourselves: what would I do?

Burning Out is literally a drama about life and death. For two years, Belgian director Jérôme le Maire followed the members of a surgical unit in one of the biggest hospitals in Paris. Constantly under severe stress, understaffed and subject to severe budget cuts, employees fight each other for resources. Meanwhile the management imposes ever more stringent efficiency and profitability targets. All over Europe burnout has reached epidemic proportions among employees in the public and private sectors. Will we end up killing ourselves? Or will we be able to find meaning and joy at work?

Lauri is an academic researcher and respected scientist specializing in human aggression and violence. During his childhood, he experienced extreme bullying. At two points – as a teen and again as a university student – he began to develop serious fantasies about committing mass murder. The documentary goes through Lauri’s life journey; how he became a carrier of “white rage” and how he took action to fight against this phenomena and stop it from over taking him.

It’s human nature to lie; we all do it! From scandalous headlines to little white lies, (Dis)Honesty – The Truth About Lies explores the complex impact dishonesty has on our lives and everyday society. Interweaving groundbreaking experiments from celebrated behavioral economist Dan Ariely with personal stories from individuals affected by the unraveling of their lies, Ariely and a team of scientists uncover our propensity to be dishonest—sometimes even unknowingly. What’s revealed is a fascinating look at the forces behind our collective behavior and the many truths behind lies.

“We were only following orders.” This remarkable film asks why Nazi soldiers agreed to do what they did, exploring how killing became a routine, how these men managed to excuse themselves, how they were manipulated by their leaders. It’s the blueprint of a genocide. We hear the killers’ thoughts as they wrote them down in letters and diaries at the time, and what they said in court years later. RADICAL EVIL is marked by Oscar®-winning director Stefan Ruzowitzky’s scenic transformations and DoP Benedict Neuenfel’s development of a unique visual language.

Mental illness is still a taboo in our society, even more so when it concerns children. A rare insight into the daily life at a child and adolescent psychiatric centre – we meet dedicated therapists, parents and patients with very different problems, united in the struggle to feel “like the others”.

AMERICAN PSYCHE explores the every-day American perspective on social and political life in America following the events of 9/11.
Travelling from New York City to Los Angeles, two European filmmakers conduct a series of interviews with Americans of diverse race, gender, religion and socio-economic standing. As they travel across America, listening to the stories of every-day people, they explore the current climate of social and political life in the United States.