Maruška, or the Story of an Apparently Real Strawberry in Winter

Directed by Juliette Léonard

Do you know the children’s story The Twelve Months? In Prague, everyone knows it. In the tale, little Maruška is sent on an impossible mission to find strawberries in the middle of winter—and she truly does. As we delve into Maruška’s story, we enter a strange space where the boundary between reality and pure fantasy begins to blur. The filmmakers Juliette Léonard and Mathilde Bédrune apply this idea to contemporary phenomena such as ASMR videos and virtual reality. This short documentary was made at the Belgian film and drama school INSAS in collaboration with Prague’s FAMU.