David Quinn of Sons and Daughters, Toronto, directed this PSA for Partners for Mental Health, a national charitable organization looking to transform the way Canadians think about mental illness.
Part of the “Right By You” campaign, the PSA shows a succession of angry teenagers going into their rooms and slamming the door behind them.
This unpleasantness is acknowledged by a super which reads, “Living with a teen is hard.”
Then we see a mom slamming the door to her daughter’s room behind her. The mother is obviously distraught and grieving as she looks about the room. The next sobering super reads, “Living without one is harder.”
We are then informed that suicide is the number one cause of non-accidental death among youth.
End tags show a website address where kids can get help: rightbyyou.ca, followed by an ID of sponsoring organization Partners for Mental Health.
Agency is UNION, Toronto.
After car accidents, suicide is the leading cause of death among young Canadians and accounts for 762 deaths a year.
“The fact that suicide is the #2 cause of death among teens is shocking,” said Lance Martin, partner and executive creative director at UNION. “We wanted to do something really impactful to draw attention to it.” The PSA, which launches during Mental Illness Awareness Week, uses the all too familiar angry door slam that we associate with typical teen behavior to highlight that sometimes there is an underlying issue that shouldn’t be ignored. It resonates with parents because the truth is that sometimes living with a teen can be challenging, but that if the signs do go unnoticed and help is not provided, living without one would be worse.”
After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More