Wake Up On Mars
Fall Grants 2019 - Post-Production Stage
Dea Gjinovci / Feature Documentary / France, Switzerland, Qatar / 74 min / Original Language: Albanian, Swedish / Interests: Creative Documentary
Synopsis
Ten-year-old Furkan is the youngest in his family and our guide through the film. His older sisters, Ibadeta and Djeneta have been in a coma for several years. Traumatized, their minds and bodies mysteriously went to sleep. Swedish doctors treat several hundred refugee children affected by this “syndrome of resignation”, a phenomenon diagnosed since 2007 that affects asylum-seeking children, often following a threat of deportation. Their parents have dedicated their existence to trying to rebuild a normal life for their family in Sweden, far from their native Kosovo, where they were victims of persecution. However, their daily life is now punctuated by visits from the doctor, days spent at the hospital and feeding through nasogastric tubes. Not to mention the legal issues, as their asylum applications have been refused one after the other. Furkan and his brother are thrust into a world they’re too young to handle. Furkan tries to escape this situation by building his own spaceship to fulfil his dream of going to live on Mars and save his sisters. This inner fantasy world of Furkan gives the film a dreamlike tone, with touches of magical realism, and positions the film in a space between imaginary and reality. The film shows our essential human need for hope, especially as a child, and offers a warning as to what can happen when all hope is gone.
Credits
- Director
- Dea Gjinovci
- Screenwriter
- Dea Gjinovci
- Producer
- Sophie Faudel, Britta Rindelaub, Jasmin Basic, Dea Gjinovci
- Executive Producer
- Heidi Fleisher
About the Director
Dea Gjinovci is a Swiss-Albanian documentary filmmaker with a background in Economics and Anthropology living between Paris, London and Geneva. She is a 2019 Sundance Talent Forum alum and 2019 Film Independent Fellow. Her award-winning documentary short ‘Sans le Kosovo’ screened at many international festivals and won Best National Film at Dokufest International Film Festival as well as prizes at the Global Migration Film Festival and Festival Cine Zaragoza in 2017. Her debut feature-length documentary ‘Wake Up on Mars’ received support from the Sundance Film Institute and the Ford Foundation JustFilms, and won the “Perspectives d’ un doc” pitch award at Visions du Réel 2018. Dea’s work has been described as “a pure embodiment of human dignity” with a sense of “beauty, poetry, sensitivity and wonder”.