Life Overtakes Me (2019) - full transcript

When I do the examination...

I tell the parents that,

"You are the ones who are suffering

because of her condition.

She is not suffering.

Your child is laying here like Snow White

because everything

is so terrible around her

that this is a way of protection.

She is just waiting

for the situation to be better.

And then she has a chance to wake up

and be a normal, lively person again."

We don't know how this happened.

She was an athlete, went running,

was active at school.

We don't know how this happened.

There, if you can just

put it on her stomach.

Let's take a look.

Put the whole thing there.

Yes.

No, this time the blood pressure

didn't change with ice on her stomach.

It did when I examined her last time.

So, she's a little more... unconscious.

That's usually how it is

after lying down for a long time.

Mm.

First it starts with... they don't talk.

They just lie down.

And then, they start to eat less and less.

Then, they stop eating at all,

and they stop drinking.

Most of the parents

don't know anything about this...

so they think that the child could die.

My partners and I

had a business,

providing internet service.

People from the government

security services came...

and asked me to shut down the internet.

So that people in the region

wouldn't have access to information,

so nobody would know

what was happening in the capital.

Yes.

The next year...

they started coming to us with threats.

They reminded us

that we had not listened to them before

and hadn't shut the internet down.

And...

we received threats

for nearly half a year.

They took him away, took his documents.

When I learned he was in the hospital,

I went to see him.

He was under surveillance, but it wasn't

hard to get into the hospital.

I just paid the guards to see him.

He had been severely beaten.

He had been tortured as well.

Then we paid for a deal

that would let him escape.

He was hiding for a while at first.

Yes.

And then he fled to Sweden.

In the meantime,

I was shadowed and followed.

One day, after taking

the children to school,

I returned home,

and they were waiting for me at the door.

His partner's wife and I

were tortured and beaten.

They took me into the woods...

and then one of them raped me.

They said if our husbands

didn't show up in 20 days...

They would kill us all...

Our kids, our husbands, and us.

We escaped to Sweden.

'We have to look for the ghost, '

said Cesar.

'Can you see anyone?' asked Cesar.

Asta pressed her nose up

against the glass.

'No ghost, ' she said.

Asta went to help Cesar.

They tugged at his legs,

but the ground was holding him."

"Happy Birthday, Mo... Mona.

Daria, seven years old."

"Happy Birthday, Daria, seven years old.

Alessan..."

- Alessandro.

- "...dro."

Some children are aware

that the asylum process is going on

and the future is uncertain.

And we know that a long period

of uncertainty after a trauma

is very harmful.

Security is really the basis

for rehabilitation after trauma.

We applied

for refugee status in Sweden.

Refugee status, yes.

We waited a year and a half.

Then we were notified

that a decision had been made,

and so we all went there.

They started to announce the decision,

stating the reasons why we had to escape.

The whole story.

The children did not know all of this.

- We hadn't told them.

- We hadn't told them.

We were keeping this from them.

So, they wouldn't know.

The children started...

The younger one started crying right away.

They were able

to understand Swedish by then.

They understood

before it was translated for us.

Then the problems with Dasha began.

Her teacher called me to come to school.

She said my daughter was crying,

saying she would be sent back and killed.

All the kids in school were crying.

The teacher didn't know what was going on.

Soon she was rejecting food,

and then she stopped responding

in general.

The children

with Resignation Syndrome,

they started to turn up

around 2003, '04, '05.

We were very surprised,

because this really didn't look

like anything

we had experienced before that.

There were rumors at the time...

Children are faking.

They are just pretending to be sick,

or parents were poisoning the children.

And these were rumors

repeated by politicians.

But it turned out that these rumors were

what we would call "fake news" today,

propaganda from far-right activists.

Every single test showed the same result.

There was no

outside manipulation whatsoever.

We're talking about children

who are really sick in a serious way.

He was a good student,

very good at mathematics.

Even the teachers

at his school in Sweden told us

that Karen was very good at mathematics.

He liked school very much.

I was working in a restaurant,

and on that day we had a lot of customers.

Some of them were talking to each other,

and I overheard them saying...

that they had killed some people.

Then we understood

that murders had been committed

and that these were the people

who had been ordered to kill.

On my way home,

I had to pick up my son, Karen.

I was with my friend,

who was taking us home in his car.

On the way, we were stopped.

They cut our car off and stopped us.

When my friend got out of the car,

they shot him.

I got out of the car

and managed to drag my son out,

and we ran away.

By the time we got to Sweden,

my son was under

a tremendous amount of stress.

He was very upset and scared,

constantly looking outside

and seeing things.

The children have seen a lot.

And they come to Sweden,

they go to school, they get friends,

they speak Swedish perfectly,

and all of a sudden...

you need to go back?

And I don't think children

can manage that.

You want to see him swallow.

Watch until he swallows.

Don't hold him hard.

- Mm-hmm.

- Just a finger, gently.

He hasn't swallowed yet.

Now he swallowed.

Now you can take the next piece.

Let's keep going.

Ice cream may not be the healthiest,

but it's something he can eat.

Let's try again.

Open his mouth. In goes the ice cream.

There you go, close his mouth.

It didn't end up behind his teeth.

I don't think... There.

No, too far forward.

Let's see what he does.

We'll wait and see.

- There we go. Now he swallowed.

- Mm-hmm.

You have to do this.

You have to...

This is what you have to do.

Hello! He's almost looking at me.

Talk to your mom.

Hi there.

That's good.

Not too much, not too long.

It'll be okay.

It's so hard.

Yes, it's hard,

but you see it's working.

You can tell it's working.

Try.

Hello.

Hi there. Say it every day.

Try to squeeze my hand, Karen.

You speak to him.

Try to squeeze my hand.

Karen, my sweet child. My darling.

My handsome boy.

The immigrants

that develop the condition

seem to come

from certain parts of the world.

They come from the Balkans,

and they come from former Soviet Republics

on the southern border of Russia,

or belong to certain ethnic minorities,

which is rather difficult to explain.

These children and their families have

almost exclusively been subject to trauma.

Psychologically or physically, or both.

And also, they are facing

the trauma of deportation.

This family, they are Yazidis.

And the Yazidis have been

second-class citizens

in most countries where they live.

They came from a small village

with about 30 households.

This village had one well,

which was common for them all.

So, every day,

the mother went to get water.

One day when the mother

went to fetch water,

four men came,

and she was raped by all four of them.

The mother's own father came

and very loudly said

that he had to kill his daughter

because she had made his name dishonored.

Our children have not seen a good life.

They go to school, but we do not know

how to survive in this country.

It's all fear. The fear is in our bodies.

- Yes, let's try this.

- Mm-hmm.

Let's see here.

Her blood pressure is normal.

Her pulse is a little fast right now.

I don't know if that's normal for her.

I'll put this on her tummy

to make it cold.

Then we can see if her blood pressure

and pulse respond.

One-hundred and nine over 68, pulse is 96.

I'm going to note this.

Let's check.

Let's remeasure it.

I think if I put it on your belly,

your blood pressure would just spike.

- Is her heart beating fast?

- Sorry?

Is it beating fast?

Yes, it's beating fast.

But it's not so unusual.

- It's not good, right?

- Yes, it's good,

because it means she's reacting

a little bit to what we're doing.

Her pulse isn't high all the time.

I think it's because I'm here.

- Is it a problem?

- No. Don't be worried.

And this is unchanged.

So she was actually

not reacting to this at all.

She wasn't affected by it.

There you go.

I want my sister to get well.

I have these toy gods.

I always wake up and talk to the toy gods.

I wake up and say,

"Please make my sister better

so we can go to school together

like before."

My children are used to living here.

Sweden is a great country for them.

I just want my children to survive here.

We don't have

any good explanation

why there are more children

with this kind of reaction in Sweden

compared to other countries.

We know of similar cases

in other countries,

but not so many.

So far we don't have any good explanation

about why that's the case.

Cultural factors

that are perhaps exclusive to Sweden

may be important

in developing this condition.

And one such factor may be the insecurity

that these families are subjected to

as they are going through

the asylum process.

There are very many under-researched areas

pertaining to this condition.

Last week they called us,

identified themselves, and said

that a decision had been made in our case.

They said we'd been granted

residency in Sweden.

A few days later,

we received a letter in the mail.

- In the mail.

- In the mail...

- Confirming that we really did get it.

- That we got it.

Recovery comes

mostly after the family feels secure.

It doesn't come immediately.

Usually, it takes several months

before you can see

that it's getting better.

We read the decision to Dasha,

told her everything was going to be good.

That everything will be okay,

and that no one would kick us out now.

The recovery

of these children is dependent

on rebuilding hope.

And it seems that the parents

are the persons

that are transmitting this hope.

So it must be

some kind of communication...

the tone,

the touch,

the atmosphere in the room...

where the children can feel

that their parents are more hopeful.

Such long hair.

Like Rapunzel's, beautiful.

All the way down your back.

I'm now working full-time.

I'm very happy about that,

and I want to continue working.

The condition

of the young Yazidi girl remains the same.

But now, her older sister is also

showing signs of Resignation Syndrome.

I visited the family

on the mother's birthday.

She told me that on her last birthday,

a year ago,

both her daughters

gave her flowers and kissed her.

And now, neither of them can do that.

Daria keeps getting better.

She's back at school.

She doesn't remember what happened to her.

When she asks, "Mom, was I sleeping?"

I tell her, "Yes, you were

a sleeping princess.

But now you are awake,

and everything will be fine."

It's important to say

that Sweden has admitted

large numbers of refugees

for many years.

We come from a society

that opens its doors.