Ji.hlava Doc Festival Winner ‘Gray Zone’ Director Relives Trauma of Premature Birth to Call for Systemic Change: ‘I Played a Dangerous Game With Myself’

In Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival winner “Gray Zone,” Slovak director Daniela Meressa Rusnoková proves that the personal can be universal, reliving her son’s premature birth.

“I’d had two children before, so I knew how it ‘should’ go. Suddenly, he was fighting for his life, in agony. I was in absolute shock. I realized how many people experience that. It’s such a massive topic, so how come we don’t know about it? How come I didn’t know?!”

At 24 weeks, the fetus is not yet legally recognized as a human being. It’s called the “gray zone.” As she points out, it doesn’t mean that people working in such units don’t see their patients as children.

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“They even have eyelashes. But when a child like that dies, families don’t know they can have a quiet moment with the baby or that they can perform their own rituals. It’s so sudden. You expected life and got nothing. But unless there’s a proper goodbye, we can’t heal.”

At the Czech festival, “Gray Zone” was named the winner of the First Lights section, it also won for best sound design and a Visegrad Award.

“I’m shocked by all this fame. I live in a flat with linoleum floors,” smiles Meressa Rusnoková. In the film, she shows the struggles of caring for a premature newborn and later for a boy with disabilities. Referencing her own experiences, but also those of so many others.

“You never hear about what mothers go through or what such separation could mean for a child. I had terrible nightmares. I would wake up and start writing them down. Physically I was a zombie, but I felt lighter somehow.”

Later, she joined forced with Zuzana Mojžišová.

“We came up with the so-called ‘script.’ Then we had to decide who was going to voice all these stories. My friends said: ‘You should be that person.’ I am used to being behind the camera, not in front of it. But it worked.”

Which is not to say it was an easy experience.

“It was retraumatizing because I came back to everything I wanted to forget. There were scenes I kept postponing and we were shooting according to what I could bear. I played a dangerous game with myself. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else.”

She had access to therapy, also during filming. But some moments in the film are still triggering, she admits.

“At Ji.hlava, I was sitting in the audience, thinking: ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be here.’ I’ve been with this film for nine years and it’s heavy, also for other people. In a way, I made a film I don’t want to watch.”

In Slovakia, 5.2% of children are born with disabilities or other vulnerabilities, she notes. Their pain affects not just them, but also their parents and siblings.

“It’s so many people and we don’t talk about it. In that situation, you need connection and you need trust. You don’t need ‘facts,’ but doctors focus on them because so often they don’t have the right tools to communicate with mothers. It feels like people are saying: ‘We are saving your child now. We don’t need you.’ But high-risk infants need mothers by their side.”

While every case is different, Meressa Rusnoková argues that whenever possible, mothers should be allowed to care for their hospitalized babies.

“When we know the child will survive, we should facilitate it. This way, you can start building this bond and see the spark in your baby’s eyes. You can say: ‘I am here and I love you.’ It’s so important in these early stages. Children who are not accepted like that, especially those with disabilities, struggle with abandonment issues. And that’s a life-long trauma,” she says.

“For now, it’s just a dream, but we see it work in other countries. Otherwise, you come home and you’re two strangers. You are so stressed, thinking: ‘They were so competent at the hospital. There were so many of them and I’m completely alone.’ You are so scared, all the time. I am just happy we have Google, because nobody tells you what to expect.”

Her other two children also appear in the film, allowing her to “show it’s all worth it” in the end.

“I was so overwhelmed with all these issues, with health problems, money problems. But these scenes allowed me to see beauty as well. My children showed me how to survive, because they didn’t feel guilty all the time. They would play with their brother and then move onto their own things. They were giving me examples of how to listen to my body.”

At the moment, Meressa Rusnoková hopes that eventually, children with disabilities and their parents will be able to lead a normal life.

“During the communist period, people with vulnerabilities were hidden away. You can see it in its architecture, which was against inclusion. Unless we remove stairs from schools, we won’t have an equal society. Unless we make space for these kids in the society, they won’t be a part of it,” she underlines.

“Right now, when it comes to inclusion, we are at the bottom of the barrel.”

“Gray Zone” was produced by Jana Belišová and Tereza Smetanová for Žudro and Film Expanded.