For the Voices With Impact film grant, Voices With Impact is seeking proposals that explore the idea of Sanctuary through the lens of mental health. A sanctuary can be a place, a person, a practice, a memory, or something else. A sanctuary can also be defined by what it keeps out: the threat, exhaustion, or loneliness waiting out beyond.

At its heart, the theme of Sanctuary is about how we as people return to our core values. Sanctuary takes many forms. For some it’s a place, a person, memory, or practice; for others, their faith, traditions, or the cultural roots that ground them. All of these are Sanctuary. Whatever Sanctuary is for you, we want to hear about it.

Proposed films can be in any genre: comedy, horror, documentary, animation, drama, experimental… everything is welcome. The only requirement is that your story explore mental health.

We’re looking for honest, human stories that bring mental health to life. Bring your raw emotion, unbridled joy, quiet stillness, and everything in between. Above all, we want to fund work that opens space for dialogue, reflection, and refuge.

We can’t wait to see what you’ll create.

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

• Refuge from our own mind: steadiness and safety for those of us living with serious mental illness, the bipolar highs and lows, the voices, the thoughts that won’t let go;
• Our connection to something bigger: nature, ritual, congregation, ancestral practice, prayer, scripture, or shared purpose that reminds us we’re part of something larger than ourselves;
• The place we come home to: the one space that holds us when no one and nowhere else does: a club, a center, the family table, a friend’s couch, an online room;
• Sober reflection: the people, spaces, and routines that hold us through addiction and recovery, one day at a time;
• Respite for the ones who hold us: the caregivers, counselors, and first responders who need to be held too;
• The name for what we carry: the relief and grief of a diagnosis, of finally understanding our experience of the world;
• The people who hold us: the family, friends, mentors, counselors, clergy, and caregivers who become a refuge for us and show us the good that’s still possible in the world.