Important new film about mental health and PTSD gets screening

Fact Not Fiction Films, a multi-award-winning independent film and documentary production company based in Horsham, is offering a private screening of its latest film to potential investors.
Finding Wilson - Hastings actress Darcy JacobsFinding Wilson - Hastings actress Darcy Jacobs
Finding Wilson - Hastings actress Darcy Jacobs

The aim is to get the film out there onto the festival circuit next year, with its important message about mental health and PTSD.

Finding Wilson, featuring Hastings-based young actress Darcy Jacobs, aims to stimulate conversation on important social issues, as Fact Not Fiction Films CEO Tristan Loraine explains. And he is pleased with the finished product – just ten or 11 minutes long, but with the potential to have a big impact.

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“I think that the film should make people discuss mental health, especially in young adults, and also it should make people look at PTSD and what is happening to our military people and other people with the condition. The film in its short amount of time raises a whole lot of questions, particularly about what social media can do to people. Without giving the story away, it is about this young girl that meets an ex-medic and they are both struggling. They are both living with images that are online non-stop and images that the paramedic can’t get out of her head.

“Last week I had some builders working in my house and one of them brought his son along. The son spent the time working and he said how good it was to be in the real world as opposed to living his life just looking at a virtual world playing some video games. I think people are losing connection with the real world. If I were Prime Minister, I would make it mandatory for everyone that finishes A levels to go and do some useful work in Africa for a month afterwards just to connect with the real world and to see how lucky they are to have a British passport.”

Tristan made the film in partnership with The Lucy Rayner Foundation, of which he is a trustee.

On May 5 2012, Jenny Rayner and her family in Reigate were tragically faced with the impact of mental illness when their daughter Lucy took her own life aged just 22. Jenny and her family were inspired to start campaigning about the mental health challenges faced by young adults; they quickly found that the support and help available to recognise and treat young adults with mental health challenges was “woefully inadequate and significantly underfunded.” Hence they established The Lucy Rayner Foundation. Jenny and her husband were present for some of the filming.

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“The film is to raise awareness of The Lucy Rayner Foundation but it is also to get people talking. Their work is not specifically on PTSD but the idea is that the more that we speak to each other, the more aware we are and the more we can stop people just keeping problems to themselves and the more we can help people. The story is that the character Darcy plays meets another girl Nicky in the woods, and the film is about what happens between them in the woods. Nicky is a former paramedic in the military. It’s a very, very powerful story. And Darcy was just amazing. When we were filming, there were people on the set watching the performance in tears. She was so emotionally grabbing. For us it was for real. You weren’t standing there thinking you were watching an actor. It really was real.”

Tristan is holding a small private sponsors premiere on November 18 in Horsham at the Everyman Cinema – 95 luxury seats: “We have got a lady that is going to run our festivals campaign to get the film in as many festivals as possible and just to get the film out there to generate as much media interest as we can. When you look at the film and think how much effort has gone into it, I think it is very good. The young actress that we had, Darcy, has done such a great job and we are going to cast her in another film next spring.”

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