''Life Overtakes Me'' ( sv, De apatiska barnen;

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

: ''The Apathetic Children'') is a 2019 Swedish-American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

directed by Kristine Samuelson and John Haptas. The film shows how hundreds of refugee children in Sweden withdraw into a coma-like illness called

resignation syndrome Resignation syndrome (also called traumatic withdrawal syndrome or traumatic refusal or abandonment syndrome; sv, uppgivenhetssyndrom) is a catatonic condition that induces a state of reduced consciousness, first described in Sweden in the 1990s. ...

because of the uncertainties of their legal status. The film was released on

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...

on June 14, 2019. , of the critical reviews compiled on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

are positive, with an average rating of . The film was nominated for an Oscar for best short-subject documentary, for the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020.

Controversy

According to witnesses cited by the Swedish magazine ''Filter'', one of the children profiled in the film was pressured by her parents to simulate resignation syndrome for the express purpose of improving the family's prospects for permanent residence status in Sweden. The witnesses insisted that the girl had been a well-functioning, normal child who was coached into faking her illness when doctors and officials were present. Sweden's public television network, SVT, interviewed Swedish pediatrician Karl Sallin, who said that the filmmakers had cherry-picked phrases from interviews with him in a "reckless and dangerous" fashion, distorting his view of the situation. SVT sought the producers repeatedly for comment, who chose not to respond.

References

External links

* * * 2019 short documentary films 2019 films Netflix original documentary films Swedish-language films Refugees in Sweden Documentary films about child refugees Documentary films about children Documentary films about health care 2010s English-language films {{short-documentary-film-stub