Open Mind Film Festival

The Open Mind Film Festival for high school students is presented by The Friends of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. The Friends is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people living with mental health issues.

The 2026 Open Mind Film Festival will be hosted by singer/songwriter, Em Beihold. Composing and performing her songs are Em’s unique approach to telling her stories and sharing her feelings. Her first runaway hit song, Numb Little Bug, was produced in 2022, after which she appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and The Late Late Show with James Corden. At the beginning of 2026 her debut album Tales of a Failed Shapeshifter was released.

For the sixth year the festival is open to high school students throughout the United States and accepts submissions of short films (5 minutes or less) on the topic of mental health and wellness. Previous films have addressed social media, depression and anxiety, body image/eating disorders, gender identity, school gun violence, and more. We invite high school students to join the important conversation of teen mental health by submitting short films that highlight your experiences and tell your unique story.

Eligible films will be screened by members of the Friends of Semel Film Festival Committee and the finalist films will be judged by a panel made up of members of the entertainment industry and mental health advocates. The judges for 2026 are:

Rae Brown - Former Open Mind Film Festival Finalist Filmmaker and Current UCLA Film and TV Major. Rae is founder of WonderStudios, a non-profit program in Lagos, Nigeria, through which she has mentored over 100 underprivileged young filmmakers teaching directing, screenwriting, and editing, while securing significant funding to enhance program resources.

Tom Gormican - Filmmaker. Tom is the writer and director of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, (which blends action, satire, and meta-humor to explore fame, creativity, and identity) and, most recently, the Sony Pictures hit Anaconda.

Zach Gottlieb - Mental health activist and Stanford student. Zach is the creator of Talk With Zach, and a speaker in many media forums; he has been published in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and more.

Grace Lee – Independent filmmaker. Grace has directed and produced award-winning and Emmy-nominated documentaries, including the Peabody-winning American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs and episodes of Asian Americans. Her most recent project is Forever We Are Young, a feature documentary about BTS’s global fandom.

Jessica Levin - Emmy and Peabody Award-winning producer. Jessica creates high quality non-fiction films, bringing to each new project her passion for music and the arts as well as her seasoned approach to archival material and inventive storytelling.

Cara Natterson, MD – Pediatrician, author, and expert on adolescent development. Cara is the author of The Care and Keeping of You series and co-founder of Order of Magnitude, a company focused on education around puberty and sex health for kids, teens, parents, and educators.

Peter Roth - Former Chairman and CEO of Warner Brothers Television. During his tenure at Warner Brothers, Peter mentored young talent and developed widely successful programming, including iconic series such as The West Wing, Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill, and countless others.

Viviane Silvera - Painter and filmmaker. Viviana’s work fuses hand-painted animation with psychological inquiry to explore memory, trauma, and transformation. Blending visual storytelling and neuroscience, she creates intimate portrayals of the mind’s inner landscape.

Susannah Stern, PhD - University Professor. Susanna teaches in the Department of Communication at the University of San Diego, and serves as Director of the Honors Program. Stern’s research examines how both fictional and news media represent adolescents, as well as how young people interact with, make sense of and are affected by media.

The Open Mind Film Festival will be held on Sunday, April 26, 2026 at The James Bridges Theater on the UCLA campus. Finalist films will be screened and prizes will be awarded to the winners.

Send us your short films by March 26, 2026 and join us in April to see the finalist films on the big screen at UCLA.

Please email us at OpenMindFilmFest@gmail.com to ask any questions.

The Open Mind Film Festival is generously sponsored by the Friars Charitable Foundation and Unlikely Collaborators plus two private family foundations.