Wake Up On Mars / Réveil sur Mars
France, Switzerland 2020

Furkan, the youngest member of a Roma family living in Sweden, attempts to come to terms with the mysterious illness of his two sisters. Ibadeta and Djeneta have been in a coma-like state for several years, victims of what has been named the “resignation syndrome”.
Designated with the diagnosis codes “F32.3 and Z65.8” by the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare in 2013, the resignation syndrome affects children whose asylum-applications are denied, leaving them unable to eat, walk or communicate and are tube fed in bed by their loved ones. In the last two years alone, 169 cases have been identified. Furkan’s sisters, traumatized by the thought of being sent back to Kosovo, their homeland, are among those whose minds and bodies have suddenly gone to sleep. Meanwhile, their little brother Furkan tries to escape his reality by building his own spaceship to fulfil his dream: go live on Mars and save his two sisters from the mysterious coma-like illness…
Poignant and beautifully told, Wake Up on Mars plunges us in the quiet (and sad) everyday life of a boy, in whose world "the future" arrives by a letter in a mailbox.