Stranger on the Bridge started off with a tweet I sent Jonny Benjamin asking him if he’d like to meet for a coffee and discuss making a film about mental health, and it was another tweet we sent a few months later to launch our #FindingMike campaign that brought this documentary to life.
In that first meeting myself and my business partner, Richard Bentley, had talked with Jonny about creating a film that would change perceptions of schizophrenia. Quite, how we would do that exactly did not materialize until after several more coffee dates when Jonny shared with us that six years previously he had tried to take his life by jumping off Waterloo Bridge but had been stopped by a complete stranger.
I suggested to Jonny that we try and find that person and that this would become the spine of a film through which we could subtly challenge attitudes towards mental health. How we would find this person, I wasn’t sure. Whether we could actually do it, I had no idea. But what drew me to this concept was that whilst it was incredibly personal to Jonny and his life, it also had a universality. We can all identify with times when we have felt alone and that no-one understands us and the idea of a Mike figure intervening at that point is something almost magical that everyone would when in that position.
Given Jonny couldn’t remember the stranger’s name we gave him the moniker Mike and created the hashtag that we launched on the anniversary of when they had met. All we hoped for was that it might attract enough attention for us to build the story of the film upon. 24 hours later it had become a viral phenomenon, trending on news outlets, in print, on television and radio and in the print around the world.
The response exceeded our wildest hopes, but in doing so it had thrown up hundreds of possible leads and created a huge dilemma: how were we to work out who was the real Mike when we had so little information to go on? Sifting through each message we were shocked by the many other gut-wrenching stories of bravery committed by others jumping in to stop an attempted suicide. That this seemed to prove to be so common is a heartbreaking indictment that backs up the horrifying statistic that 17 people take their life each day in the UK.
Our story had also brought about other unexpected results, which we labeled the ‘ripple effect’. We started to receive brutally raw messages from surviving family members of those who had successfully taken their life thanking us for highlighting these issues. But most surprising, and compelling, were those writing in to say that seeing our story had led them to seeking help for problems they were experiencing, and in some instances people who had been about to take their own life stopping because of the hope that Jonny’s story had given them. It was a truly humbling experience to realise that our film was impacting on so many people in so many different, yet positive, ways.
Being able to reunite Jonny with Neil was an incredibly beautiful moment. To see the closure it gave both men is something I will never forget, and for all the crew involved it was a completing of the circle that we had never dared to think possible. But this story doesn’t just belong to us. It lives on and keeps a’rippling in the lives of those who watch it and share its message. It reveals the best of humanity, the true power that the medium of film can wield and the differences that can be made. And it is this that we are most proud of.
Stranger on the Bridge is nominated for Best Newcomer Documentrary at The Grierson Awards 2015.
Sam Forsdike for Postcard Productions; first shown: Channel 4
