Joe Anderson “The Red” is a movie about the anxiety created by student debt.

It’s that dreadful, suffocating feeling you get when you know you have something difficult to face, but you don’t want to admit it.

That feeling is the subject of “The Red,” the title of an edgy new short film — and a related marketing campaign — that its creators hope will persuade young people to take charge of their student debt before it becomes an insurmountable burden.

The campaign aims to call attention to a student loan education and financial management program called SALT, created by American Student Assistance, a nonprofit loan guarantee agency based in Boston.

SALT works with colleges and individual borrowers, to help students plan for and manage their educational debt, said Sue Burton, managing director of consumer products and marketing for SALT. Students, graduates and their families can get access to SALT’s free advice and money management programs on the saltmoney.org Web site. (The program’s name originates from the practice in ancient Rome of paying soldiers partly with salt, she said.)

The program’s goal is to help the most borrowers possible navigate their student debt, she said. “The premise is borrow less, borrow smart and repay well,” she said.

To get the message across to young people who would rather not think about their student loans, SALT retained the advertising and marketing firm SS+K. The firm devised a nontraditional campaign on the theme of “Face The Red.”

Bobby Hershfield, chief creative officer of SS+K, said young people often feel a sense of paralysis, when faced with debt and financial woes. So instead of dealing with the problem, they tend to avoid it — which just makes the problem worse. “We wanted to find a way to let them confront it and face it head on,” he said.

The firm realized it had to go beyond a traditional public service announcement to get young people to pay attention, he said. So it selected Borderline Films, known for such dark fare as “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” to direct “The Red,” a short thriller suffused with creepiness. The film uses “The Red” as a metaphor for the feeling of being strangled by too much borrowing.

The film depicts a young woman whose life is increasingly constricted by debt, depicted as an amorphous red cloud that snakes around her neck as she tries to go about her daily life. She attempts, frantically, to seal off her room with duct tape, to no avail. The Red just keeps coming (sort of like a crimson version of the angel of death that seeped under doorways in the classic Hollywood production of “The Ten Commandments.”)

The film was cleverly marketed at first as a traditional movie, with promotions that didn’t mention its student debt connection. Its true purpose was revealed last week, when the film debuted in five markets (Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Tampa and Washington) ahead of the opening of the movie “Iron Man 3.”

Now that the movie has opened, students can go online to facethered.com to see the full eight-minute version of the film, and to learn more about SALT. (A four-minute version of the film is currently being shown at movie theaters in 10 more markets, and is also available on YouTube.)

“It’s a movie with meaning, not just an entertaining thriller,” Ms. Burton said. “I hope it resonates with them. I hope they are inspired to take action and face their own red.”

As a further incentive, SALT is offering a sweepstakes via Facebook that offers $10,000 to three winners, to help pay for educational costs or pay down student debt.

Take a look at SALT’s offerings and let us know what you think. Do you think the film is an effective way to get students to confront their debt?

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 7, 2013

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/a-film-to-help-students-face-their-debt/?partner=rss&emc=rss