Wrong Planet
The feeling of being on the wrong planet has pursued them in everyday life, in college, at work and at school. The world is a chaos of too many inputs that they cannot decipher. However, with irony, humor and ingenuity Hendrik, Rainer and Nicole invent small tricks to deal with our world. Nicole, for example, lives in strict routines, waking each morning at 5 am each day and eats cabbage. Rainer consistently avoids small talk, and any form of conversation that has no clear goal, then spends time in the company of his beloved books. In addition, at clubs, he does avoids contact with other people, he only wants to “feel himself and the music,” for the whole night. Fourteen-year-old Hendrik acts like a Tamagotchi, which his fellow humans could turn off at any time. Rainer, Nicole and Hendrik are highly talented and have Asperger syndrome, a form of autism. They militantly reject the idea that this is a disability. Normality, according to Rainer, is only a question of attitude and measurement. Therefore, he prefers to call normal people NT’s, neurologically typical. Nicole could not imagine a life without autism, because it would no longer be her life. An autistic person, reflects Hendrik, is as normal as any other person, just with a few peculiarities, which we all have.
For a year, the camera has accompanied the life and development of the three protagonists. As a result of long preliminary discussions with them, a film aesthetic has developed describing their perception of the world, which increasingly grows subjective in the film.
Due to the closeness and the observation of three exciting personalities, Wrong Planet has triggered a suspicion: what is the line between “normal” and “mentally ill”? The certainty of the meaning of normality is toppled in “Wrong Planet”, the logic and the thoughts of the three protagonists repeatedly expose the madness of rules and customs of the majority of people.
"Be normal" is suddenly only a matter of perspective.