Promoting stroke awareness through short movies and film festivals

摘要

Wakeup Stroke 120, our newly produced short movie, received four nominations at the 2021 New York City international film Festival (NYCIFF). These nominations include best short film, best short film leading actor, best short film director, and humanitarian awards. We won the humanitarian award and the best short film (Figure 1). This triggered a wave of news reports both in China and in the United States in May 2021.1,2 Such news reports help us in promoting stroke awareness tremendously. May is the Stroke Awareness Month in the United States. The timing was perfect to convey such an important message using the tool of a movie. The film received very positive reviews and testimonials from the international community (Supplemental File 1). Through such multidisciplinary collaborations using short videos and short movies, we can potentially penetrate various barriers for popular science education and reach large audiences through various media platforms and news reports. This award-winning short movie is highlighted on the home page of the NYCIFF (www.nyciff.com) along with our stroke awareness appeal speech.