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PATIENT SOLDIER

By Arun KUMAR

True Story - Pre-Production 2023

At the deadly turning point of the Covid-19 outbreak, a loving family man becomes one of the first to be severely infected and realizes the power of positivity through his darkly humorous yet harrowing, and hallucinatory fight toward recovery.

- Year of production
- 2023
- Genres
- True Story, Drama
- Countries
- IRELAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Budget
- 3 - 5 M$
- Duration
- 110 mn
- Director(s)
- Arun KUMAR
- Writer(s)
- Arun KUMAR, Barra FITZGIBBON
- Synopsis
- The true story of Barra Fitzgibbon, PATIENT SOLDIER details the 17 days of a young and healthy man’s hallucinatory battle to survive the Covid virus. Barra and his team of ICU consultants fight for his life as he goes on a surreal, mind-bending journey into his own psyche and consciousness.
  
  It’s March 2020, the very start of the Covid pandemic in the U.K, when knowledge about the virus is limited and medical treatment is all but guesswork. London is days away from entering its first complete lockdown.
  
  Often presented in a hallucinogenic and psychedelic style, Barra’s story reveals how the power of positive conversations between himself, medical personnel, friends, and family, help him to fight and deal with the trauma of catching Covid, being ventilated and intubated, and forced into a 6-day coma. These conversations prove to be as important as modern medicine.
  
  It’s a dark, humorous, and macabre journey. A warts and all reveal of a war zone in ICU, playing against the backdrop of an NHS buckling as it goes through the most tumultuous period in its history.
  
  Barra becomes the first Covid patient to wake up from his coma, the hospital’s very first Covid survivor. Once awake, he soon realises that it’s down to him to get out of the hospital before he gets sick again, and once well to make it his life’s work to help the NHS and anybody else willing to listen, understand the extraordinary good, positive conversations can bring. It’s a matter of life and death and he’s a living testament, just!
  Barra communicates with family, friends, and even the Grim Reaper with his mind only. Loved ones are not allowed to be by his bed. His personal relationships are psychological and conversations, dark and often hilarious, take place in his consciousness. Basically, a pub! His happy place.
  
  Barra’s transformation is complete when his final tasks to achieve hospital discharge are satisfied via a live game show in front of a packed TV audience…….in his mind!