Silent Voices, a documentary highlighting Black mental health struggles, premiered at Durham College, bringing attention to the challenges faced by the community.
First conceptualized by Dr. Crystal Garvey, a nurse and academic, the film which aired on March 6, was developed over two and a half years to address mental health disparities within the Black community.
Produced by Garvey and directed by Mitchell Verigin, the documentary features six Black individuals sharing their personal experiences while confronting systemic barriers.
The project gained new momentum after Durham College secured a $360,000 federal grant from the Community and College Social Innovation Fund (CCSIF), funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
This funding allowed researchers at Durham College’s Social Impact Hub to launch a study aimed at improving mental health care for Black communities.
“The background story behind this documentary is that it was created about two and a half years ago before the grant, before any of this,” Garvey said. “At that time, the goal was simply to bring awareness to mental health issues in our community.”
Gavey’s background in emergency and mental health nursing led her to notice the disparities that the community was facing.
The title Silent Voices carries deep significance, Garvey said, as it reflects the difficulty Black individuals often face in sharing their lived experiences.
“I called it Silent Voices because our voices organically tend to be silent in this narrative,”
Garvey said, “Whether it’s not having the capacity to share our lived experiences, the opportunity to find, seek and ask for help and then having to navigate those inner struggles as well.”
For Garvey, this project was her first step into filmmaking and producing.
“I had never done anything like this before, so it was really a learning curve for me,” she said.
“It was learning through Nate what editing looks like… It was understanding structural frames and colouring and the things that we take for granted when we do watch TV or any form of entertainment, not realizing how much work really happens in the background.”
Despite the challenges, Garvey really enjoyed it.
The documentary was recorded during Black Mental Health Week to raise awareness, but it faced obstacles in reaching an audience. It was initially submitted to several film festivals but did not gain traction.
“So it’s been sitting on a shelf,” Garvey said. “The grant, however, provided us the opportunity to finally bring the project to life. This is more like a segue to raising awareness about the research project.”
Nathaniel Ballantyne, the documentary’s editor and filmmaker, echoed that sentiment.
“When we first created it, the intention was to submit it to the Toronto International Film Festival, which we did. But when you submit something to TIFF, they kind of lock you out of your own project for like ten months. You can’t show it, you can’t do anything with it,” he said.
“Ultimately, we didn’t get in and you kind of lose momentum.”
However, with the research grant, the team saw a renewed opportunity. “It was just evident that this piece was meant to come to life with that opportunity,” Ballantyne added.
Ballantyne saw the documentary as a vital way to highlight Black mental health stories. His connection with Garvey began years ago when he was a student at Ontario Tech, where she was his professor in a community health course.
Their relationship evolved when he became a nurse and later a faculty member at Ontario Tech and DC, turning them into colleagues.
“When Crystal shared her passion for spoken word and using video as a medium for storytelling, one day she approached me and said, or asked, ‘Can we do a documentary on the narrative of Black mental health?’ Obviously, I said absolutely.” He added
The documentary captures raw, unfiltered narratives. “The important thing was not cutting out stuff,” Ballantyne emphasized. “Originally, we thought, ‘Let’s try to make this half an hour,’ but that wasn’t enough time to have everyone’s stories unadulterated.”
“So we just let it breathe (and) now it’s a little over an hour long.” he added
Vance Mackenzie, the executive producer, hopes it sparks a broader conversation.
I feel the biggest challenge is facing our issues up in this country and things that we’ve dealt with in our culture,” he said. “I hope the audience receives it very well, of course, on the initiative of hearing it and absorbing it. I hope it will also be absorbed in their ongoing lives.”
He said Silent Voices is the beginning of a larger movement, as the next step is to keep on going, keep spreading awareness and keep making people understand how mental health affects our community and how they can reach out for help
“The main thing is to be able to talk to someone, communicate, try to get another person’s perspective, get some help of some sort, whether it be a friend, mother, a family member, or someone that you could trust,” he said.
Ballantyne noted that some early feedback suggested making the documentary more flashy and dramatic, like a Netflix production, but the team resisted that approach.
“We just shot them talking-head style and let the camera roll, not interrupting, just letting them speak until they were finished,” he said.
This approach, he said, captured raw emotion and reflective pauses that revealed the true impact of their experiences.
The film is a deeply personal and collaborative effort, with contributions from the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences and the Region of Durham.
Garvey credited the team for making it possible. “I love everybody on this team… everyone is so remarkable and awesome,” she said. “They believed in me, an outsider from the world of media, to come and do this work.”
Ballantyne said the project had a profound impact, even on those involved in making it.
“Some of us, not being from the Black community, didn’t totally understand the lived experience,” he said. “This project taught us. I think it’s an important educational piece that needs to reach as many people as possible.”
As Silent Voices gains visibility, Garvey, Ballantyne and Mackenzie hope it will spark meaningful discussions and encourage individuals to seek help.
“I want them (audience) to understand the lived experience we have,” Garvey said. “I’m bringing this documentary to bring you on a journey to understand the first-hand lived experience in our community and with this part of our community we never expose to the world because of culture and taboo.”