Show Notes
"We are so much stronger than we are ever told we are." - Scilla Andreen
As an Emmy nominated costume designer, co-founder of IndieFlix, award-winning filmmaker, CEO of Impactful Networks, and Mother of six, Scilla knows what doing hard things is all about.
She lost her son to suicide, and her daughter to cancer on her birthday.
Three days after her son passed, she got on a plane to a conference on men's and boys' mental health. Not because she was okay, but because she had questions, and she refused to stop asking them.
It's who she is.
Long before any of that, a friend named Tina, the executive director of her foundation, kept asking her to make a film about mental health. She kept saying no… nobody wants to watch a movie about mental health.
Then Tina passed by suicide.
Scilla had no mental health background; she had grief, guilt and questions.
She did the only thing she knew… started filming anyone who would talk to her, from Harvard researchers to six-year-olds, with no script and no money.
That turned into her film, Angst. It sat for six months, then screened in 90 countries within 14 months.
The insight that drove all of it: the power of a film isn't in the watching, it's in the conversation after.
When people feel safe enough to talk, they share what they've been carrying alone.
The mission isn't therapy, it's education.
Mental health literacy is a population-level problem, and the solution looks more like CPR training than a clinical appointment. Everyone needs access.
Human connection matters more than ever right now.
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