Filmmaker gets insight into a pal’s mental illness

A documentary challenges how we treat and think about mental disorders

Jonathan Balazs and Khari “Conspiracy” Stewart make one of the unlikelier pairs anyone is ever apt to encounter.

Balazs, a compact 27-year-old of Hungarian descent, is a recent fine arts graduate from Ryerson University who, with his trimmed beard and waxed moustache, soft voice and thoughtful demeanour, seems every bit the Euro-artiste.

Stewart, tall, black and 35, with a large stud in his nose, an address in Parkdale and the layered, baggy uniform and hood of the street, cuts a much more imposing figure.

But the two men are friends. Close friends. Closer, probably, than most men ever get.

They are also collaborators — both as partners in a hip-hop album and, most recently, as filmmaker and subject in a documentary called Mars Project, an unsettling and provocative look at madness and the mental health system in Canada.

The two men first crossed paths 10 years ago in Edmonton. Balazs and Stewart were both part of the local hiphop scene. So compelling was Stewart’s work — and so eccentric his behaviour — that Balazs noticed him “long before we ever uttered a word to each other.”

Eventually, they started hanging out. Balazs interviewed first Khari’s twin brother and musical partner, Addi, then Khari himself for an article published by an online hip-hop magazine.