Nobody Loves You and You Don’t Deserve To Exist in special screening to support charities

A grassroots, award-winning Manchester feature film will be screened at a community cinema in Greater Manchester to support two charities whose work is related to some of the themes explored on screen.

Nobody Loves You and You Don’t Deserve To Exist, the creation of Manchester film-maker Brett Gregory, is getting its latest outing on the big screen in the city-region at the Leigh Film Factory.

The film charts a path through modern Mancunian history from rave culture to the Covid-19 pandemic, looking at the tough lives of working-class people under three different Conservative prime ministers. The screening will support two charities whose work is related to the film’s storyline, long-established Manchester homelessness cause Lifeshare and Wigan-based organisation EPic HOPE which tackles the difficult subject of suicide.

When is the latest screening for the film and why is it taking place?

Nobody Loves You and You Don’t Deserve To Exist, which follows the difficult life of a central character who is sexually abused as a child in the 1980s, gets into the drug and rave culture of the 1990s and then faces the loneliness and isolation of the novel coronavirus and lockdown in the 2020s, is being screened at Leigh Film Factory on Thursday 23 March.

The film screening is being supported by Lifeshare, which supports Manchester’s vulnerable people and those who find themselves on the streets, and EPiC HOPE which is hoping to help reduce the very high numbers of people, especially men, in working-class areas such as Wigan who are taking their own lives.

The charities are being supported through the exposure and awareness-raising of being involved with the screening at the cinema inside Leigh Spinners Mill which has more than 100 seats and cinema-goers on the night will also be encouraged to make a donation if they can.

Brett said the charities’ work definitely chimes with the events portrayed in the film and said the idea of supporting these causes came about in an interesting way at a previous screening.

Brett said: “After the first screening in January we had a short Q&A and this guy said the protagonist should have sought support and help rather than suffering on his own.

“That got us thinking. I’ve had an association with Lifeshare for a while and I just contacted them with the idea that if people watching the film wanted real answers or were in trouble themselves these are the charities they can seek out. These are the ones who responded and thought it was a good idea to use the film as a platform to give exposure and communicate to people what support is there.

“Redundancy and debt can lead to not being able to pay your rent and that can lead to homelessness, and debt can also lead to depression, family and relationship breakdown, self-harm and unfortunately suicide, particularly with men. The film is a male story and male figures for suicide are much greater than women. There is an emphasis on male mental health in the film.

“The Miners Strike in the 80s and the privatisation of higher education via student debt in the 90s hit the working class, as always, the hardest. I know: I was there. And now with the cost-of-living crisis it’s happening all over again.

“Greater Manchester is blessed that charitable organisations like Lifeshare and EPiC HOPE work tirelessly around the clock and throughout the region to help to pick up the pieces, address the issues and break the cycle.”

Free tickets for the event can be booked through Eventbrite.

What have the organisations involved in the screening said?

Judith Vickers, operations manager at Lifeshare, said: “Lifeshare has been supporting those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness for 39 years, and we’re currently experiencing an incredible increase in numbers of those who need our service.

“Any support or exposure we receive by way of incredible creative initiatives such as this mean we can continue to fight for those who need our help.”

Ellie Palma-Cass, founder of EPiC HOPE, added: “The prominence of suicide in Wigan, a mainly working-class region of Greater Manchester, and the recent cost of living crisis is no coincidence. In fact, it is direct evidence of communities left to fend for themselves in this time when they need help and support the most.”