Fifty-Four Days

Fifty Four Days, a short film written and starring Cat White, follows the journey of a girl who starts wild swimming in the wake of her father taking his own life.

By swimming each day at dawn and forming an unlikely friendship, she learns to accept her grief and the grief of those around her.

A powerful film that explores mental health, grief and healing and how nature and swimming provide healing benefits.

White’s aim for the film was to open up conversations around wellbeing practices and its inaccessibility to many people and the implications of this, White explained in ‘The Metro‘ interview:

‘The fact that swimming is inaccessible to so many people (especially Black people, but many other groups too) is so wrong.

How can people not see the link between this and alarming statistics – such as Black people being more likely to be diagnosed with severe mental illness than any other ethnicity in the UK?

People speak a lot about the healing benefits of swimming but rarely has it been considered that these are not benefits open to all. Why should wellbeing practices only be open to those who can afford them?’

Fonic was only to happy to support in the production of the film, providing full post production audio. We hope this film helps to challenge issues surrounding swimming and mental health.