Film / News
Bristol filmmaker’s mental health short released online after festival success
Two-and-half years in the making, Bristol-based director Jon Holmes’ intensely personal short film Dogs Chasing Cars was inspired by his own experiences with depression from the age of seventeen.
“In a moment of truly deep depression, I decided that I would simply ‘talk’ and record my exact thoughts there and then in an attempt to capture it all within that moment – everything I felt, everything that hurt, all of it, every damned little detail,” he explains.
Now in a happier place, he shot this raw and truthful film in Horfield with his cousin Thomas Benoy, the intention being to “showcase depression for the broken reality of what it actually is. It’s a short created with an intent to not sugar-coat this horrible, nasty disease.”
A successful tour of the world’s festival circuit saw the short screened as far afield as Germany, Portugal, Malaysia and Ireland. In the UK, Dogs Chasing Cars was shown at last year’s Global Health Film Festival in London, with a director Q&A. Now at the end of its festival run, the film has been made available online, with the intention of inspiring others. “It’s a film that I am very proud of and believe that everyone should see,” Jon tells us.
Note: Dogs Chasing Cars contains themes of suicide, depression and some light nudity.
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
