The Wheel

The Wheel is a short fiction film that follows a young girl who uses a wheelchair and dreams of becoming a ballet dancer despite her mother’s constant resistance. At first, the story is deliberately structured to make the audience understand the mother’s perspective, presenting her daughter’s dream as something seemingly impossible and creating emotional tension between protection, limitation, and personal ambition.

As the story progresses, memories reveal the deeper reason behind their conflict. A tragic accident not only took the life of the girl’s father but also took away her ability to dance. The revelation changes the audience’s understanding of both characters: the girl’s determination is rooted in a passion she once experienced, while her mother’s resistance is connected to grief, fear, and the painful history they share.

Rather than ending with the girl abandoning her dream, the film allows that dream to take a different form. Mother and daughter gradually reach a place of understanding, and her passion for ballet continues through painting. Although she can no longer express ballet through her own physical movement, she finds another creative language through which she can remain connected to it.

Markus worked as the Screenwriter, developing the characters, emotional conflict, and narrative structure of the film. He constructed the story around a gradual shift in perspective, using the revelation of the family’s past to reframe the central conflict and lead the character toward a new way of understanding what it means to continue pursuing something she loves.