For our 2026 Voices With Impact film grant, we’re seeking proposals that explore Coping, Connection, and Community through the lens of mental health.

We’re leaving the interpretation of this theme wide open. Whether your vision is personal, poetic, surprising, subtle—or all of the above—we want to see what these words mean to you.

Your film can focus on story, aesthetic, or both. Comedy, horror, documentary, animation, drama, experimental—even westerns or sci-fi, if our jury believes the budget can hold—it’s all welcome. The only requirement: your proposal must explore mental health.

We’re looking for honest, human stories that bring mental health to life—whether through raw emotion, radical joy, and/or everything in between. Above all, we want to fund work that opens space for dialogue, reflection, and connection.

So bring us your boldest, brightest, most curious ideas. We can’t wait to see what you’ll create.

To help spark ideas, here are just a few of the ways you might engage with the theme:

• Small rituals of survival: personal strategies people use to stay grounded amid chaos—whether spiritual, absurd, or deeply practical
• Intergenerational coping: how families pass down or disrupt harmful coping patterns
• Art as a lifeline: how creativity, storytelling, music, or humor becomes a lifeline
• Finding connection in unlikely places: online friendships, coworking spaces, support groups, shared grief, dog parks
• Rebuilding connection after rupture: healing after estrangement, betrayal, or ideological conflict
• The politics of empathy: how truly listening can change everything in a polarized world
• Mutual aid and collective care: how people are caring for each other when systems fail
• Spiritual or cultural communities as sites of healing or tension