Above us all - Eugenie Jansen

Year:
2014
Length:
100 minutes

Tagline:
Girl grieves for her mother.

Logline:
In a realistic contemporary 3D fairy tale, a young Australian girl tries to cope with the loss of her mother, surrounded by the battle fields of the Great War.

Synopsis:
Shay is an eleven-year-old girl growing up with an Indigenous Australian mother and a father who is a Flemish astronomer. He is researcher at an Australian Astronomical Observatory.
After his wife’s death, he decides to return to Ypres (Belgium) for a time-out, taking his two children with him.
ABOVE US ALL tells the story of an amputated family that becomes uprooted after
moving to a new world. This world seems to be held captive by it’s own past. Hundred years after the outbreak of the war, Ypres still struggles with the question which story of that collective traumatic event is the most relevant.
There is this collective remembrance and there is this very personal mourning about someone you loved so much.
“Does every star have a name?” Shay asks her father. He refutes that there are way too many stars. “What do you have to be, or what do you have to do to get a name?” is her next question. She is told by her grandfather that her mother is now somewhere at the sky camp in the vast and boundless space above, where her father envisions an endlessly expanding universe with new physical discoveries.
“It’s impossible to forget someone you really loved,” concludes Shay, who stubbornly refuses to budge. Her father believes otherwise. “You have to move on, there is no choice, the world drags you along.”
Each star travels its own way across the universe. Especially in times of grief.

Cast:
Shayleah Sands (Shay)
Kaleb Sands (Kaleb)
Maarten Baes (Koen)
Pearl Davern (Maree)
Greg Griffiths (Greg)

Crew:
direction: Eugenie Jansen
script: Kim Niekerk, Patrick Minks
camera: Adri Schrover NSC
supervisor stereographer: Kommer Kleijn SBC
sound: Kasper Koudenburg
editing: Nico Leunen
sound design and re-recording mixer: Michel Schöpping
image post-production: Loods Lux & Lumen
line producer: Mariette van Sisseren
production manager: Hanneke Schots
delegate producer: Digna Sinke
co-producer: Tomas Leyers, Marc Goyens, Guy & Wilfried van Baelen, Brigitte Baake
producer: René Goossens, Annemiek van Gorp

the film is a production by De Productie in co-production with Minds Meet and KRO televisie, with Digna Sinke (SNG Film) as delegate producer

this film is financially supported by:
Netherlands Film Fund
Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds
Mollywood film financing & taxsheltering
Gebroeders Demasure
Tax shelter investor UTB industry
Rotterdam Media Fonds
Dutch Cultural Media Fund
CoBO