Film-maker Duncan Cowles braves his discomfort to address men’s inability to talk about their problems

Called to confront his ultimate fear – expressing his emotions on camera – Scottish documentary-maker Duncan Cowles occasionally assumes a furtive, wary expression. So he deserves credit not just for facing his own inhibitions in his debut full-length film, but for broaching the vast, ever more discussed, but still maddeningly nebulous topic of men’s mental health – and in an ingeniously light way.

With his kinda, whatchamacallit, you know, beating-around-the-bush narration, and propensity to zone out while shooting pretty shots of bumblebees, Cowles plays up the fact he’d rather be discussing anything but this. But freaked out by his own inability to tell his parents he loves them, he canvasses his family and friends about their emotional makeup. His father reckons Cowles’s taciturnity set in because of the general silence around his own dad’s alcoholism. One pal has a tactic to release repressed feelings: he permits himself crying sessions to precisely two Martha Wainwright songs.