Synopsis
After his daughter survived eight months of treatment for leukaemia, the Lithuanian filmmaker Arunas Matelis did not turn his back on the hospital. He filmed the kids in the leukaemia ward in Vilnius during their day-to-day routine, without becoming sentimental. For the parents, their worst nightmare has come true, but what do the children themselves think? A life among medicine, IVs and tubes does not prevent them from just carrying on. Their adaptability is incredible. One of the mothers says her son has not grown dejected in hospital, because he has gotten used to it and does not know any better. The children practise karate or dream of getting hamburgers and Coke instead of the old cabbage soup. The future is often brought up, as if it were not finite: they hope they will not turn blond when their hair grows back, or they want to become a doctor, "but not in the leukaemia ward." Before Flying Back to the Earth is interlaced with black-and-white pictures showing the children in the middle of a smile, yawn or gesture, momentarily freezing time in this thorough documentary that does not deal with death, but with life.