Awakenings is a 1990 rama film based on Oliver Sacks' memoir, Awakenings. It tells the true story of a doctor (Oliver Sacks, fictionalized as Malcolm Sayer) who, in 1969, discovers beneficial effects of the then-new drug L-Dopa. He applied it on catatonic patients who survived the 1917-1928 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. Leonard Lowe (played by Robert De Niro) and the rest of the patients were awakened after decades of catatonic state and have to deal with a new life in a new time.