Mental health
with, all the time,” Miller told The Denver Post.
“Every human, at every level, in every demographic, socioeconomically, socially, has dealt with struggle. It’s a matter of being human. As a parent, as a husband, I am compelled to learn about this stuff because there’s zero chance that you get through life without needing more knowledge and more understanding, more skills and tools than you have in this space,” he added.
Bob Holme, director of mountain maintenance at Winter Park, appears in the film in a segment that describes the struggle and death of Ben Lynch, a professional snowboarder who took his own life in 2021. Holme coached Lynch while he was in grade school and high school.
“This is way bigger than just Ben. I lost five people in 18 months by suicide,” Holme said. “Everybody will talk about how awesome it is to live in the mountains in all that snow. When people say, ‘How is it living in the mountains?’ I’m like, ‘It’s really tough,’ straight up. It feels like it is winter nine months a year. You need to be tough to make it up here. That toughness comes with an emotional callous. People will kind of set it aside and go ‘No, it’s fine. It snows nine months a year, no big deal.’ But the cold days and the dark days start adding up.
“What I hope this film does, it creates a conversation to really start talking within the community about all things. Not just the good things, but all things, and to make space for it,” he added. affiliation or your socioeconomic status. Everybody wants to feel good, they want to feel connected to other people, they want to feel tolerated and understood and appreciated and validated and valued, but our social framework right now is not doing that. There’s not a whole lot of really deep, heartfelt communication and openness and support from a human-tohuman aspect.”
“The Paradise Paradox” was privately funded through donations so Rapkin can make it available for free public screenings. There is one scheduled screening remaining for 2024, for March in Montana. To host a public screening or inquire about the film, go to paradiseparadoxfilm.com.
“We don’t have investors looking to get their money back,” Rapkin said. “Everybody that’s funded this film did it because they wanted to make an impact. We’re able to do screenings around the country and beyond — we have requests in France and London — and they’re free. We’re not charging a screening fee. We plan to make the film free for streaming.”
Holme hopes the movie, now being shown at public screenings around the state, brings mental health challenges into the open and encourages those who need help to seek it out, rather than suffering silently in denial.
“It’s sort of like walking by a stranger in a hallway, you just both kind of look in different ways, even though you know you’re passing,” Holme said. “No one actually wants to look it dead in the eye and say, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ I hope this provides the opening to give people reason to reach out, find resources, for resources to be able to reach out and find people that need them, and just start connecting a few dots.
“The puzzle pieces are out there, it’s just that no one has taken the time to put them on a table and start building the picture,” he said.