05-03-2020, 05:52 AM
Documentary Entry: Survivors, Six Unlikely Stories of Unsung Heroes
Summary: "Survivors" tells the story of six regular people during the Eirian Civil war and Darrin's regime. However, these aren't regular stories. Each of these people faced death directly, and against extreme odds, survived through strength, wit, and will, all the while risking their lives further by helping bands of resistance fighters restore the Republic.
The Documentary divides it's three and a half hour length into seven segments, each telling the story of a different survivor, and saving the final segment for when the survivors meet for the first time. Each of their stories are interconnected, and although they have never met each other properly, they could not have survived without each other.The stories are narrated by the survivors themselves, and depicted by actors.
The Priest
Thirty-four year old priest Henry Gaverra did not expect mortal danger to come with his vows. He ran a small church in the Fourteenth District of New Riga, and he took pride in helping people find their faith as part of his job. Then Neil Darrin overthrew the Republic in 2007 and forbade religious gatherings. Suddenly, his job got a lot more dangerous.
Still, he continued to meet secretly in his church, providing guidance to souls who needed it badly. One day, he was approached by a resistance band, who asked for his assistance in hiding a Senator fleeing from Darrin's executions. That Senator was named Katherine Wellton, and she had escaped the initial massacre in the Senate chambers. Gaverra agreed without question, and gave her food and shelter in the church. He also taught classes on theology to young students, explicitly illegal under Darrin's edicts.
Then, a few weeks after Senator Wellton's arrival, while Gaverra was teaching a class, a group of soldiers came banging on the church doors. Henry made sure the Senator and his students escaped out the backdoor by distracting the soldiers. Unfortunately, he was captured, and hauled off to prison.
A few days before his scheduled execution, he was being marched around the outside track. He was so tired and malnourished, he could barely run the laps. Suddenly, the gate separating the prison from the outside world was shattered by an explosion. A resistance band stormed the prison, liberating the prisoners inside.
Throughout the regime era and Civil War, Gaverra aided the rebellion, from setting up education for young children, to providing shelter and food for the homeless, to even setting up a rudimentary hospital and serving as the chaplain to bury dead resistance fighters. "It was a sad job, but I don't regret doing it. Someone had to make sure they were able to rest in peace".
The Nurse
Laura Virtanen was twenty-four years old in 2007. She was working as a registered nurse in New Riga, and was part of the way to becoming a full doctor. However, history had something different in mind. Her hospital was transferred over to military control, and she lost her job due to budget cuts.
However, that didn't stop her. She found an abandoned building in downtown New Riga and set up a makeshift clinic as best as she could. Unfortunately, she wasn't getting paid for this, and she was going hungry. She was approached by a resistance band, who offered her a deal. In exchange for treating Resistance members, she would be given food and better medical equipment.
She agreed, and soon her clinic grew steadily into a field hospital. She had invited former doctors and nurses who had been laid off to help, and soon it grew to a full-blown medical center. Then, one of the new doctors was followed by a group of soldiers on the way to work at the hospital. The secret was revealed, and doctors, nurses, and patients alike were rounded up and captured. Those who resisted were shot.
Laura saved both patients and doctors alike by showing them the back way out, but was shot in the leg and captured. Fortunately, her captors didn't tighten her cuffs tight enough. She smuggled herself out through the factory the prisoners are forced to work in.
She continued to work as a resistance nurse after she escaped, having been transferred to a makeshift hospital inside a small church that had been renovated to a proper clinic. She saved many lives throughout Darrin's regime and the Civil war.
The Architect
Johnathan Engelson was a twenty-nine year old architect living in New Riga's Third District in 2007. He was a popular up-and-coming architect, and was known for his practical layouts and sleek modern design, his most famous project being the Reitzen Market in the Fifth District.
After Darrin's forces took New Riga, Engelson was "Contracted" to design houses for the new elite and functional prisons and factories. Unknown to the authorities, he kept spare blueprints of every building he built, and started sending them to resistance groups.
Eventually, he started deliberately designing flaws, secret entrances and exits, and secret storage compartments into almost every building he designed, and told the resistance where each flaw was. He was apprehended in 2010 by the Military Police after attempting to smuggle his new designs to a resistance courier.
Engelson's situation looked bleak, and he waited in his cell for his execution date, which was fast approaching. A couple days later, a day before his scheduled execution, he was looking around at his cell, when he saw that the floor behind his toilet was broken, leading by the sewage pipes.
He waited until lights out, then crawled out of the prison, following the pipes to a sewage plant, and headed back into New Riga. While there, he started designing hideouts for resistance bands. Later in the war, he helped oversee improvements to a small church turned hospital, and continued to work for the resistance until the end of the war.
The Accountant
Rachel Davelle, a recently-graduated finance major in 2007, worked at the New Riga city hall, helping manage the city finances. Her colleagues and her worked hard to balance the city's expenses and sources of income, and did a good job.
Until Darrin's rule engulfed New Riga. Over half of her team was conscripted to the military, and the rest of the team had to work overtime just to keep up. The city's economy started to buckle, and they were ordered to oversee programs to get the workforce working for the government.
The institution of the Arms factory construction programs forced a decent portion of the workforce to work in factories building weapons, rations, and ammunition, and many of these factories housed poor working conditions. Davelle grew increasingly angry at these new programs, and sought to put an end to the oppressive "Reform" attempts.
She managed to get into contact with a resistance courier and began copying and smuggling documents on arms factories and troop training centers in New Riga. She copied huge sections of the city records in 2009. With her help, the New Riga Resistance bands were able to sabotage and destroy the factories.
In 2010, She was bringing the next batch of files to a resistance courier in the sixteenth district, when she was apprehended and taken to the infamous work camp near Saint Leare. Horrendous conditions and little food caused many there to fall victim to illness. Rachel was starved, weak, and sick, but was not broken.
After spending a year at the Saint Leare Camp, she was able to escape with the help of a sympathetic guard, and managed to stumble all the way into Saint Leare. She was taken in by a couple who owned a bakery, where she was fed and nursed back to health. After regaining her strength, she got into contact with a small resistance group around Saint Leare, and helped them secure resources that they desperately needed. She continued working for them until the end of the civil war.
The Student
Elijah Belren was just nineteen in 2007, but was already a prodigy. He was awarded a spot at the prestigious New Riga Research Institute and University, and was majoring in engineering. He was beloved by both his teachers and his peers, and was doing extremely well in his classes.
However, after Darrin took over, the New Riga Research Institute was reassigned to developing military technology. Students were either expelled or assigned to aid the research. Belren was thrown out of the institute dorm rooms, with nowhere to go, and no way to get money.
He lived on the streets for a couple months, fending for himself, until he was forcibly hired for the arms factories in New Riga. They wanted his engineering experience to maintain the machinery and conveyer belts. He did his job dutifully, until the poor conditions of the factory started weighing on him. He sought out local resistance bands, giving them information, crates of weapons and ammunition, and even sabotaging the factory on occasion.
He was unfortunately caught red-handed on one of his attempts to sabotage a conveyer belt, and was sent to a work camp in the western mountains. This camp, designated camp 236, had worse conditions than the arms factories, and many workers died of hypothermia and exhaustion. The camp, ironically, was tasked with making environmental survival equipment for soldiers.
However, the irony worked to Elijah's advantage. Over the course of weeks, he stole individual parts of the kit, a rope one week, a match and some tinder the next, and so on. Eventually, he had enough equipment to begin escaping the camp, and so he cut a small part of the fence, and began his long trek down.
It took him a week and a half to get to a village halfway down the mountain camp 236 was built on. The village was called Slipèceda, and he was taken in by a sympathetic family. He had gotten severe frostbite, and it took weeks to get him nursed back to health. While staying with the family, he drew up a diagram of Camp 236, the only diagram still existing today.
He traveled back to New Riga, where he served as a military engineer by constructing resistance buildings and defenses. He worked on helping remodel the small chapel hospital downtown, and when New Riga was liberated, he helped design the city's defenses, preventing a counterattack. His designs saved many soldiers' lives.
The Athlete
Sarah Quellena was twenty-seven in 2007, and living in a lavish apartment in New Riga's third district. She was a member of the National Track and Field team, and was set to participate in the Olympics if she kept performing well. As such, she was in top shape, and was one of the fastest runners in Eiria.
After New Riga's fell, life initially didn't change that much for Sarah. She was deemed an essential entertainment worker and kept running in state-sponsored competitions. She won several competitions and tournaments, and was an extremely popular athlete among the elite. She didn't like having to compete under an oppressive regime, but it became a fact of life.
Life took a bad turn, however, when she was competing in the 2009 Borean Track Tournament. In the last round, when it looked like she would win the title again, she collapsed in the 400 meter dash. She had torn her left ACL, and she needed decent surgery to repair the damage. Unfortunately, the injury caused her pain if she put significant weight on her left leg, and therefore barred her from racing.
After she lost her running career, her life took a downturn. She was evicted from her apartment, and had to start living on the streets and forging ration cards to survive. She was caught with one of the forged cards, and was imprisoned in a New Riga jail in the 12th district. While incarcerated, she was forced to run laps during yard time, causing more significant damage to her knee.
Luckily for her, a particularly important resistance agent was imprisoned in the cell across from her. The Eclipse Resistance group led a jailbreak on the prison, freeing Quellena in the process. She requested a job from the formerly imprisoned resistance agent, and she became a courier for the resistance, a job ironically nicknamed "Runner".
She carried a whole bunch of secret documents and illegal contraband across cities, checkpoints, and even across provinces. After the pain from her injury began to flare up again, she was reassigned to a less dangerous job as an ambulance driver for resistance soldiers. She brought many injured soldiers to the secret hospitals in the New Riga area, including the small chapel in the Fourteenth District. She saved many soldiers' lives.
Production Information
"Survivors" was directed by the Legendary Tervali director Samuel Telea-Sunta, who previously directed the historical fiction story "Maid of the Devil", a controversial, yet extremely well written story of a servant of Neil Darrin. "Survivors" is completely narrated by the six survivors themselves, adding a candid effect. This was the first documentary Telea-Sunta has directed. The film has won a Star of Clio, the highest award for a documentary in Eiria.
Release Year: 2019
Languages: English, Traditional Eirian(Subtitles), French (Live Translation/Subtitles), Latvian(Live Translation).
Summary: "Survivors" tells the story of six regular people during the Eirian Civil war and Darrin's regime. However, these aren't regular stories. Each of these people faced death directly, and against extreme odds, survived through strength, wit, and will, all the while risking their lives further by helping bands of resistance fighters restore the Republic.
The Documentary divides it's three and a half hour length into seven segments, each telling the story of a different survivor, and saving the final segment for when the survivors meet for the first time. Each of their stories are interconnected, and although they have never met each other properly, they could not have survived without each other.The stories are narrated by the survivors themselves, and depicted by actors.
The Priest
Thirty-four year old priest Henry Gaverra did not expect mortal danger to come with his vows. He ran a small church in the Fourteenth District of New Riga, and he took pride in helping people find their faith as part of his job. Then Neil Darrin overthrew the Republic in 2007 and forbade religious gatherings. Suddenly, his job got a lot more dangerous.
Still, he continued to meet secretly in his church, providing guidance to souls who needed it badly. One day, he was approached by a resistance band, who asked for his assistance in hiding a Senator fleeing from Darrin's executions. That Senator was named Katherine Wellton, and she had escaped the initial massacre in the Senate chambers. Gaverra agreed without question, and gave her food and shelter in the church. He also taught classes on theology to young students, explicitly illegal under Darrin's edicts.
Then, a few weeks after Senator Wellton's arrival, while Gaverra was teaching a class, a group of soldiers came banging on the church doors. Henry made sure the Senator and his students escaped out the backdoor by distracting the soldiers. Unfortunately, he was captured, and hauled off to prison.
A few days before his scheduled execution, he was being marched around the outside track. He was so tired and malnourished, he could barely run the laps. Suddenly, the gate separating the prison from the outside world was shattered by an explosion. A resistance band stormed the prison, liberating the prisoners inside.
Throughout the regime era and Civil War, Gaverra aided the rebellion, from setting up education for young children, to providing shelter and food for the homeless, to even setting up a rudimentary hospital and serving as the chaplain to bury dead resistance fighters. "It was a sad job, but I don't regret doing it. Someone had to make sure they were able to rest in peace".
The Nurse
Laura Virtanen was twenty-four years old in 2007. She was working as a registered nurse in New Riga, and was part of the way to becoming a full doctor. However, history had something different in mind. Her hospital was transferred over to military control, and she lost her job due to budget cuts.
However, that didn't stop her. She found an abandoned building in downtown New Riga and set up a makeshift clinic as best as she could. Unfortunately, she wasn't getting paid for this, and she was going hungry. She was approached by a resistance band, who offered her a deal. In exchange for treating Resistance members, she would be given food and better medical equipment.
She agreed, and soon her clinic grew steadily into a field hospital. She had invited former doctors and nurses who had been laid off to help, and soon it grew to a full-blown medical center. Then, one of the new doctors was followed by a group of soldiers on the way to work at the hospital. The secret was revealed, and doctors, nurses, and patients alike were rounded up and captured. Those who resisted were shot.
Laura saved both patients and doctors alike by showing them the back way out, but was shot in the leg and captured. Fortunately, her captors didn't tighten her cuffs tight enough. She smuggled herself out through the factory the prisoners are forced to work in.
She continued to work as a resistance nurse after she escaped, having been transferred to a makeshift hospital inside a small church that had been renovated to a proper clinic. She saved many lives throughout Darrin's regime and the Civil war.
The Architect
Johnathan Engelson was a twenty-nine year old architect living in New Riga's Third District in 2007. He was a popular up-and-coming architect, and was known for his practical layouts and sleek modern design, his most famous project being the Reitzen Market in the Fifth District.
After Darrin's forces took New Riga, Engelson was "Contracted" to design houses for the new elite and functional prisons and factories. Unknown to the authorities, he kept spare blueprints of every building he built, and started sending them to resistance groups.
Eventually, he started deliberately designing flaws, secret entrances and exits, and secret storage compartments into almost every building he designed, and told the resistance where each flaw was. He was apprehended in 2010 by the Military Police after attempting to smuggle his new designs to a resistance courier.
Engelson's situation looked bleak, and he waited in his cell for his execution date, which was fast approaching. A couple days later, a day before his scheduled execution, he was looking around at his cell, when he saw that the floor behind his toilet was broken, leading by the sewage pipes.
He waited until lights out, then crawled out of the prison, following the pipes to a sewage plant, and headed back into New Riga. While there, he started designing hideouts for resistance bands. Later in the war, he helped oversee improvements to a small church turned hospital, and continued to work for the resistance until the end of the war.
The Accountant
Rachel Davelle, a recently-graduated finance major in 2007, worked at the New Riga city hall, helping manage the city finances. Her colleagues and her worked hard to balance the city's expenses and sources of income, and did a good job.
Until Darrin's rule engulfed New Riga. Over half of her team was conscripted to the military, and the rest of the team had to work overtime just to keep up. The city's economy started to buckle, and they were ordered to oversee programs to get the workforce working for the government.
The institution of the Arms factory construction programs forced a decent portion of the workforce to work in factories building weapons, rations, and ammunition, and many of these factories housed poor working conditions. Davelle grew increasingly angry at these new programs, and sought to put an end to the oppressive "Reform" attempts.
She managed to get into contact with a resistance courier and began copying and smuggling documents on arms factories and troop training centers in New Riga. She copied huge sections of the city records in 2009. With her help, the New Riga Resistance bands were able to sabotage and destroy the factories.
In 2010, She was bringing the next batch of files to a resistance courier in the sixteenth district, when she was apprehended and taken to the infamous work camp near Saint Leare. Horrendous conditions and little food caused many there to fall victim to illness. Rachel was starved, weak, and sick, but was not broken.
After spending a year at the Saint Leare Camp, she was able to escape with the help of a sympathetic guard, and managed to stumble all the way into Saint Leare. She was taken in by a couple who owned a bakery, where she was fed and nursed back to health. After regaining her strength, she got into contact with a small resistance group around Saint Leare, and helped them secure resources that they desperately needed. She continued working for them until the end of the civil war.
The Student
Elijah Belren was just nineteen in 2007, but was already a prodigy. He was awarded a spot at the prestigious New Riga Research Institute and University, and was majoring in engineering. He was beloved by both his teachers and his peers, and was doing extremely well in his classes.
However, after Darrin took over, the New Riga Research Institute was reassigned to developing military technology. Students were either expelled or assigned to aid the research. Belren was thrown out of the institute dorm rooms, with nowhere to go, and no way to get money.
He lived on the streets for a couple months, fending for himself, until he was forcibly hired for the arms factories in New Riga. They wanted his engineering experience to maintain the machinery and conveyer belts. He did his job dutifully, until the poor conditions of the factory started weighing on him. He sought out local resistance bands, giving them information, crates of weapons and ammunition, and even sabotaging the factory on occasion.
He was unfortunately caught red-handed on one of his attempts to sabotage a conveyer belt, and was sent to a work camp in the western mountains. This camp, designated camp 236, had worse conditions than the arms factories, and many workers died of hypothermia and exhaustion. The camp, ironically, was tasked with making environmental survival equipment for soldiers.
However, the irony worked to Elijah's advantage. Over the course of weeks, he stole individual parts of the kit, a rope one week, a match and some tinder the next, and so on. Eventually, he had enough equipment to begin escaping the camp, and so he cut a small part of the fence, and began his long trek down.
It took him a week and a half to get to a village halfway down the mountain camp 236 was built on. The village was called Slipèceda, and he was taken in by a sympathetic family. He had gotten severe frostbite, and it took weeks to get him nursed back to health. While staying with the family, he drew up a diagram of Camp 236, the only diagram still existing today.
He traveled back to New Riga, where he served as a military engineer by constructing resistance buildings and defenses. He worked on helping remodel the small chapel hospital downtown, and when New Riga was liberated, he helped design the city's defenses, preventing a counterattack. His designs saved many soldiers' lives.
The Athlete
Sarah Quellena was twenty-seven in 2007, and living in a lavish apartment in New Riga's third district. She was a member of the National Track and Field team, and was set to participate in the Olympics if she kept performing well. As such, she was in top shape, and was one of the fastest runners in Eiria.
After New Riga's fell, life initially didn't change that much for Sarah. She was deemed an essential entertainment worker and kept running in state-sponsored competitions. She won several competitions and tournaments, and was an extremely popular athlete among the elite. She didn't like having to compete under an oppressive regime, but it became a fact of life.
Life took a bad turn, however, when she was competing in the 2009 Borean Track Tournament. In the last round, when it looked like she would win the title again, she collapsed in the 400 meter dash. She had torn her left ACL, and she needed decent surgery to repair the damage. Unfortunately, the injury caused her pain if she put significant weight on her left leg, and therefore barred her from racing.
After she lost her running career, her life took a downturn. She was evicted from her apartment, and had to start living on the streets and forging ration cards to survive. She was caught with one of the forged cards, and was imprisoned in a New Riga jail in the 12th district. While incarcerated, she was forced to run laps during yard time, causing more significant damage to her knee.
Luckily for her, a particularly important resistance agent was imprisoned in the cell across from her. The Eclipse Resistance group led a jailbreak on the prison, freeing Quellena in the process. She requested a job from the formerly imprisoned resistance agent, and she became a courier for the resistance, a job ironically nicknamed "Runner".
She carried a whole bunch of secret documents and illegal contraband across cities, checkpoints, and even across provinces. After the pain from her injury began to flare up again, she was reassigned to a less dangerous job as an ambulance driver for resistance soldiers. She brought many injured soldiers to the secret hospitals in the New Riga area, including the small chapel in the Fourteenth District. She saved many soldiers' lives.
Production Information
"Survivors" was directed by the Legendary Tervali director Samuel Telea-Sunta, who previously directed the historical fiction story "Maid of the Devil", a controversial, yet extremely well written story of a servant of Neil Darrin. "Survivors" is completely narrated by the six survivors themselves, adding a candid effect. This was the first documentary Telea-Sunta has directed. The film has won a Star of Clio, the highest award for a documentary in Eiria.
Release Year: 2019
Languages: English, Traditional Eirian(Subtitles), French (Live Translation/Subtitles), Latvian(Live Translation).
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