Should we talk about suicide?
“When one talks about suicide one talks about life, not death.” Every day in Finland alone, two people commit suicide. Thousands of people are affected by suicide yearly.
Once I Dreamt of Life is a feature-length documentary film about suicide — subject that people rarely want to talk about. It’s a view on one’s personal relation to suicide, but it also studies suicide as a social phenomenon: What are the motives, warning signs and consequences? The film follows the journey of a young man, an animated character based on a real person, on his path towards suicide.
The journey is described by people who’ve had personal encounters with suicide – parents who lost their child, young adults who considered or even tried committing suicide.
When pieced together, these experiences offer a collage of our perception of suicide. They are full of pain, sorrow, and guilt, but they also show how people cope with the past and find reasons to go on with their lives. The intention is not to romanticise suicide or judge. The film encourages people to talk about painful and difficult experiences and reminds us how important it is to be heard. Måndag created a marketing strategy that treated the tender subject respectively. The campaign raised a lot of discussion about the topic and we did our part to erase the stigma of suicide and encouraged people to seek help.
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