Brothers Joe Massa and Christian Massa
Meet Joe Massa and Christian Massa – actors, filmmakers, and brothers from West Haven, Connecticut. From the time they were kids they were constantly playing with cameras – it was clear that the Massa brothers had a natural passion for film.
In 2016, the two created the silent, short film Pressure. The film featured a man – played by Christian, who was plagued by a dark-cloaked, pale figure – a visual depiction intended to represent suicide. Throughout the film, the character of ‘suicide’ – played by Joe, haunts the character of the man wherever he goes and offers him numerous ways to take his own life.
Ultimately, Christian’s character overcomes the entity, physically pulling off its shroud of darkness, thus freeing himself from his suicidal thoughts. The film was accepted into several film festivals nationwide and made its debut in Los Angeles, California, at the Regal LA Live.
More recently, in 2018, continuing in the realm of suicide awareness, Joe created the captivating series, My Suicide Story, a web series that showcases actual survivors of suicide telling their stories of survival. The series was unintentionally created, when a close friend of Joe’s told him that he was a survivor of suicide. After hearing this, Joe signed on his brother Christian as the assistant director and then filmed his friend’s story and uploaded it to YouTube. To his surprise, survivors from around the country began reaching out requesting to share their stories in an episode.
The release of the fourth installment brought a lot of attention to the series and quickly became its most infamous episode. It features a young college student named Alexandra, who described her attempt to take her life by drinking a toxic concoction of bleach, aspirin, and psychiatric medications that she had been hoarding, in vivid detail.
The episode was featured in several news articles throughout the New England area, including a front-page feature in the New Haven Register. In the weeks following the release of Alexandra’s Story, several people reached out to Joe. This list of people included doctors, mental health organizations, random viewers, other survivors of attempted suicide, and even the family of a teen who was not lucky enough to survive their suicide attempt – all reaching out with their praises for what the episode and the series are doing to help shed light on what a person suffering from suicidal ideologies is experiencing.
