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Themes

The Demon of Midday is Fýr Romu´s diploma work for FAMU film school in Prague. It´s an exceptional student film on technical ambitiousness and production duration. The thirty minutes film aims to be noticed both on high visuality and by the multifaceted story.

Midday tells about Fern, a young woman, who tries to survive a demonic possession. The demon rips away pieces of her soul and drives away people who love her.

The film is a fantasy adventure, but also an allegory of depression and about the difficulty of finding help. The story is based on the director´s own experience of a long illness.

Drawing of the Demon abusing Fern

"With the film, I want to tell that fighting with depression doesn´t make someone a loser. On the contrary - it´s a fight that demands skills and strength every day. Fern struggles and survives because she is strong and tough."

Old shamanistic cultures believed that illnesses were caused by malevolent spirits. In illnesses like depression, a person lost small pieces of their soul to these specters and lost the full functionality of their personality. The shaman could reach out to the phantoms in a dream state and fight the demons, reclaiming the soul. This sounds intriguingly like psychotherapy, and anthropologists say the “primitive” shamans were proficient mental healers. This works as a basis for the occult mechanism of possession in Midday´s world.

"I know that Fern feels: that she´s not worth anything, that no-one can love her. In that situation, a person pushes all the helpers away. Only when you finally believe that the only fault is in the dark thoughts, you get back beliefs in yourself. Then the ability to receive love also returns."

The message of Midday is that you should not be ashamed of an illness.  Struggling is not weakness but tells about courage and resilience. Asking for help is also heroic. Overcoming fears and prejudices is a victory, where the story changes from a tragedy to an adventure.

Midday_snap_prev_08_Baba_Yaga_edited.jpg
CONTACT INFO

Sleeper Service Productions

hmr@iki.fi

Fýr Romu

fyr@iki.fi

© 2021-2023 by Fýr and Sleeper Service Productions

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