Zach’s Story: A Suicide Prevented

Monica Zinn’s documentary short focuses on 22-year-old Zach Anast, a Californian who went through his teen years with the best of all worlds: a loving and supportive family, excellent grades and SAT scores, and stellar accomplishment on his high school’s baseball team. But, strangely, Anast’s combination of scholastic and athletic achievements failed to secure him a place at the University of California schools where he applied. Already masking emotional difficulties in dealing with losses on the baseball field, Anast’s depression at failing to achieve his college goals sent him into a depressive spiral. Things hit rock bottom when he found himself in an evening rendezvous on at a seaside cliff contemplating suicide–a call to a friend detailing his situation helped spark an effort to rescue him and begin a therapeutic regiment to regain his emotional strength. This production features in-depth interviews with Anast, his mother and Sonia Luckey, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner who explains the tumult that Anast went through and the methods in mitigating such problems. While Anast deserves commendation in detailing this painfully personal story, the film is more than a little cheesy in having Anast reenact his sorrows through anguished posing around an empty baseball field. And while Anast brings his current girlfriend on-screen to show his emotional progress, the film never explains whether he went to college or what he is now doing with his life. Nonetheless, this production serves as a compelling introduction to a thorny subject that many people are not comfortable in confronting. Recommended. Aud: J, C, H, P. (P. Hall)