Filling The Gap, by Alfie Faber (Australia, 2023), is a short film that looks at addiction, alcoholism and drug use through the prism of art, perception and young adulthood. It considers mental health and motivation, offering a personal viewpoint that asks the audience to notice small shifts in how we see and support one another. Presented as part of the Focus on Ability International Short Film Festival, it sits within a programme dedicated to films that highlight the abilities, experiences and achievements of people with disability. A thoughtful and visually curious piece, it invites conversation rather than conclusion.
It's a very stereotypical sort of attic thing where you feel like you don't fit in and um, low self esteem and things like that, looking for some kind of way out. Since I was a kid I guess my head was always very loud and when I found alcohol it was the first thing that made it go quiet. I developed this idea that nobody really cared about me and therefore I shouldn't care about myself and that everything was really brief and temporary in the world and I didn't need to worry about acquiring anything, being anybody or um, being worried about what others thought of me because I didn't think much of myself anyway. My social circle used drugs and my social circle used heroin, um, so it was my normal. It always starts recreationally I think, um, and I've, I was recreationally, I knew that I drank alcoholically so when I first started drinking I would drink to blackout. I would drink a lot every week and then I was introduced to drugs and then later I used drugs and alcohol to sort of manage my emotional state. So it was, it was bliss to come home after a day at work and just let it go and, and then one day I looked over and that line had been crossed and I didn't see the day it happened. I became more isolated, um, and the drinking went from more of a social kind of thing to a, to an isolated thing where I was just looking for the effect and no social benefit from it. Eventually you couldn't get out of bed without a drink or a drug, you know, couldn't do anything functional, um, I couldn't have, uh, conversations with people without drugs or alcohol. There's a, there's a saying that, um, people, addicts won't stop or won't change until the pain of changing becomes less than the pain of using. Seeing so much tragedy as well, seeing, you see, and just so much loss, you, you finally reach a point where you, I guess you've just had enough. You're really inside at a point where you, you know, you can say it for many years but then you actually feel it. When you start to feel that you've had enough, um, you start to search for a way out. Someone's living their life in a, like, a single-minded pursuit. Um, to stop that is going to leave this huge gap. What I found is that I needed to find some meaning, I needed to find something to take the place of what has taken the place of before. What helps me is to just get off myself and actually help others forget about myself, stop putting myself first and maybe start, you know, putting others first. That's what gives me meaning today, yeah. I take risks in here and they pay off in a way that getting wasted and destroying myself couldn't, that I confront my fears in here in a way that I couldn't outside. Like, in here, this is where it all happens. Fill my life with stuff, fill my life with people, fill my life with meaning and I don't use anywhere near as much. It's occasional. Other people will need two years in rehab, you know, abstinence for the rest of their lives and they will get meaning and that will be perfect for them. You feel meaning and you don't end up in a really dark place. you
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by Alfie Faber - OPEN ENTRANT DOCUMENTARIES
