My Soul Has at Least the Sniffles

In this interview, director Mike Mills talks about his new documentary, which is called Does Your Soul Have a Cold? It tracks five Japanese people who decide to take antidepressants, a fairly recent option there. As Mills explains in the interview:

If you think about it, during the eighties and nineties the pharmaceutical companies had a growth market in the United States with antidepressants. And towards the middle of the nineties it levels off. And being a profit-based situation they need to create some markets. So they started going everywhere, and Japan was just one of the many places. And the real problem to them, with where Japan was at, while there's a lot of depressed people - depression wasn't something that was talked about or something that people had access to. And that's why they came up with that metaphor "Does Your Soul Have a Cold?", or they would call it "A Cold of the Soul." And that phrase described it really well to Japanese people so they understood what it was. And just that education at the surface of the market, about this thing that I find very true, coming from the perspective that depression is manufactured. It can be, but I think all the people in my film are really dealing with some level of pain that anybody would want relief from.

It was made for IFC, and it debuts on that channel October 22. If you're reading this, you know me, you have IFC, and you don't mind company on October 22, please let me know. I'm really eager to see this.

(Via Pop Candy)