​20,000 people will attend 300 events throughout Scotland during this year's Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival

Passion is the theme for one of the world’s biggest social justice festivals which launches in Scotland this Saturday (10 October).

Events at the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, which opens on World Mental Health Day, will be attended by more than 20,000 people and will take in over 300 events staged throughout the country.

The festival, which features film, performing arts, literature, music and visual arts, will explore how we learn to live with our passions and make them work positively for us, as well as the passion and dispassion associated with mental ill-health.

Highlights of the performing arts programme include national tours of In Her Shadows, a unique visual performance presented by A Blank Canvas & Jabuti Theatre with acclaimed director Cora Bissett; and Rapture Theatre’s new production of Arthur Miller’s The Last Yankee, commissioned to celebrate the legendary writer’s centenary.

This year’s theme, passion, reflects their vital commitment in helping us make Scotland a better place

In Glasgow and Edinburgh Linda Duncan McLaughlin’s Descent, presented in partnership with Luminate and A Play, A Pie and a Pint, takes an unflinching piece about a couple’s struggle to keep their love alive in the face of dementia.

This year’s film programme boasts more premieres than ever before, including UK debuts for Dancing with Maria, an impassioned documentary about a 90-year-old dance teacher in Buenos Aires, and The Silence of the Flies, which explores a mysterious suicide epidemic in the Venezuelan Andes. Dead When I Got Here, set in a mental asylum run by its own patients, receives its European premiere.

2015 Scottish Album of the Year Award winner Kathryn Joseph will perform at the festival, headlining Edinburgh Carers Council’s Music Matters event, while acclaimed Glasgow-based singer-songwriter RM Hubbert plays as part of Headspace in Glasgow.

Lee Knifton, head of the Mental Health Foundation Scotland, said: “For the last nine years, our festival has given artists and communities the opportunity to passionately and creatively challenge social injustice and instigate change. This year’s theme, passion, reflects their vital commitment in helping us make Scotland a better place.”

The festival runs until Saturday, 31 October. For full deatails of the programme and venues, visit its website.