Objective: From April until November 2006, the association Irrsinnig Menschlich e. V. from Leipzig carried out the film festival "Ausnahme|zustand" about the topic Mental Illnesses all over Germany. The festival was on tour in more than 70 cities. The aim of the festival was to give the topic mental illness a podium, to inform and to entertain.
Method: A Pre-Post-Test was carried out to look for the effect of the documentaries shown on social distance of the audience towards mentally ill people. A total of 405 visitors to the film festival in Leipzig could be questioned. In addition, 104 other viewers could be questioned.
Results: As the results show, the effect on the viewers' social distance strongly depends on the content of the shown documentaries: A reduction as well as an increase of social distance were identified. For two of the documentaries no significant changes were found. It is noticeable that a highly selective group of people has been reached with this activity; with the main proportion of the visitors suffering from a mental illness themselves or knowing a mentally ill person. This is also reflected in the significantly lower social distance of the film festival viewers compared with the other viewers.
Discussion: It has to be taken into consideration that documentaries about mental illness do not automatically reduce stigma, and that these kind of activities will mainly attract people who are already sensitised for this topic.