TRIBECA 2020 - Wake Up on Mars
Dea Gjinovci’s Wake up on Mars is a moving and intriguing family drama, following the hardships and difficulties that the Roma-born Demiri family face whilst living as refugees in Sweden, awaiting the acceptance of their asylum request.
Humanity and its drive in the face of adversity is a universal theme in cinema. It is fundamentally what makes Wake up on Mars such compelling viewing. The film is narrated by the young boy of the family, Furkan, who guides the audience through his tale with a sense of innocence and heart. In addition to the pending refugee status that his family is facing, both of his sisters also suffer from a mysterious dissociative illness named “Resignation Syndrome”, which has placed them both in vegetative states for a number of years. This plot-line and its exploration of the illness alone is interesting enough for a whole film, but working in tandem with the plot of the family’s pending asylum and the themes of belonging that come accompany this, the film excellently creates an overall cinematic experience that truly speaks on what it means to be human.
All of these themes are aided greatly by director Gjinovci’s decision to have Furkan narrate the story in voiceover, and his dreams of building a spaceship to fly to Mars and escape the reality of his life are a charming way to help the audience really connect with the plight of a young person experiencing the things that Furkan is. Wake up on Mars is, in essence, a documentary, but stylistically exists in an interesting and surreal visual space somewhere between narrative-based film and handheld documentary. The Demiri family and their plight is a true story and they “play” themselves. However, the film is often staged in its cinematography and narrative presentation through the avant-garde, hyper-realistic style of filmmakers like Lars Von Trier, Harmony Korine and Ken Loach. By doing this, it presents the narrative in a really interesting way. In this regard, the film works successfully both as an informative documentary and also a visually interesting piece of cinema.
Cinematographer Maxime Kathari’s camera floats over the narrative like a Gaspar Noe movie and, alongside Gael Kyriakidis’ beautiful
score, creates a surreal and dream-like experience from start to finish. Shot against the snowy, white backdrop of Sweden, everything in the film is always stark and bright; an interesting juxtaposition considering the emotional weight of the things occurring on screen. In fact, juxtaposition and contrast is integral to everything that makes Wake up on Mars work so well. There’s the bright, white snow of Sweden next to the thematic darkness of the Demiri sisters potentially never waking from their comas; the documentarian storytelling with the cinematic, constructed shooting style; Furkan’s real life on Earth and dream life in Space. Everything clashes and contrasts, yet somehow never feels contradictory or out of place. This symbolizes the Demiri family’s positivity and optimism against the hand they’ve been dealt in life, and work so well in the film primarily because of director Dea Gjinovci and cinematographer Maxime Kathari clear, distinctive and unified vision for the story. Together with the family themselves, the filmmakers present the important story of people like the Demiri family and their experiences with panache, emotion and heart.
All in all, Wake up on Mars is a powerful, ethereal piece of cinema, which manages to explore the human condition and teach its audience about some issues in the world that aren’t necessarily covered a lot in the media, whilst at the same time doing so with a strong and unique visual language. Spoilers withheld, the film’s final sequence – specifically its final two shots – are particularly incredible, and manage to capture the entire essence of the film in just two very short yet powerful moments. Running at just over 70 minutes, Wake up on Mars never becomes boring or outstays its welcome; it succeeds as a personal, introspective look into the lives of people who, despite all they face, retain their love, trust – and in Furkan’s case – innocence and imagination, in order to strive and survive.