We live in the midst of a great mental health epidemic. In a time where young people are lonelier, more anxious, and more disconnected now than ever before it is all too common for people to fall into vicious cycles of chasing social highs, only for the high to collapse leaving them feeling more alone than before, doomed to die a slow spiritual death by a thousand cuts. As we continue to become more technically connected but emotionally distant from one another, our worlds become smaller than ever before and to the mind of a young person who has never known anything else, the act of sending a text can feel like life and death while the act of making a plan with a friend can feel like a struggle for their very existence.
And the nature of this struggle is that it is taken on alone, behind a plausible face, rarely glimpsed and almost never spoken of. Sometimes we forget it’s even there. Our mission with Smoke Don’t Clear is to not let people forget; to get inside the experience of anxiety and disconnection, to capture what it feels like to be alive in the world today, to stare it in the face and reflect it back to the world and say to those people who know this existential struggle all too well: “what you are experiencing is real, and it is brutal, and you are not alone.”
"Smoke Don’t Clear" follows Danny, a 19-year-old college student, through a day filled with interactions, awkwardness, and introspection. Danny’s story starts with him holed up in his room, filled with anxiety over texting an unresponsive Hinge date. He is interrupted by his outgoing best friend Raf who drags Danny out for a night of socializing in the wake of the implosion of his situationship.
The narrative moves through a series of social encounters. A trip to a smoke shop to pick out a bong. A chaotic pregame with Raf’s friends. An overcrowded party involving bong hits on a rooftop. Amid all this, Danny runs into Amy, a former classmate who never became more than a casual acquaintance, sparking a potential connection. Danny chases the high of the connection, but his momentum comes crashing down as Raf spirals into emotional turmoil leaving Danny both a witness and a caretaker.
Danny’s night ends with him feeling empty and isolated, left alone in a quiet park, waiting for something more in his life—a text, a connection, or perhaps just a sense of belonging.
It's a story that too many people have lived too many times and we need your help to tell this story in the truest way.
