The film tells the story of 10-year-old Tom, who dislikes touch, noise, the color red, and sudden changes. When his mom gets a new job, he must spend the summer at his grandparents’, which seems like a nightmare to him. However, Tom decides to treat it as preparation for his dream—a journey to Mars.

• film with Polish dubbing and English subtitles
• age: 8+

Recommendation:

Ewelina Błachowicz, coordinator of the Klub Świadomej Młodzieży at the Autism Team Foundation

The protagonist of the film Greetings from Mars, directed by Sarah Winkenstette, is 10-year-old Tom, whose passion is space and whose dream is to fly to Mars. The boy is developing on the autism spectrum. He has a sister and a brother (older than him). Mum is changing jobs, but it involves a stay in China, for 4 weeks. Dad is dead. Mum’s idea is to take the children to visit their grandparents in the countryside (I might add that they haven’t seen them for a long time – they are Dad’s parents). Mum’s idea is to treat the boy’s stay with his grandparents as a space expedition. It works out. The boy prepares for it meticulously, and also has a cosmonaut outfit. During the stay, there are various funny stories, interspersed with a very interesting and true perception of the world by autistics: sounds that come from all sides and are very disruptive, the colour red, blood (causes great panic), not looking at people passing by, sitting only at a square table, in difficult situations he puts on headphones and listens to recordings as if from a space rocket, meals at specific times (every minute), the same with drinking water. He also shows interesting solutions, e.g. to go through a red door, glasses with blue lenses are used. The boy finds his dad’s telescope in the attic and prepares an observatory there himself. According to careful calculations, he discovers an asteroid, which turns out to be a comet. He becomes its discoverer and appears on television. He also learns to make himself cucumber sandwiches. Thanks to his passion, he becomes more independent.

The film is interesting, with humour and a message. With passion we can achieve a lot and make our dreams come true. Just like with us at the Klub Świadomej Młodzieży, we can build ‘anything’ on passion.