Selected for SCINEMA 2017

How we die, and what happens after we die, will be the next major medical/ethical issue we confront as a global population. At present, death and dying are seen as failings of the human body, or a result of inadequate access to technology. This itself, mortality and the subsequent questions of ‘faith’ in what is to come, is, of course, very existential- because faith is derived from a the need for a ‘higher’ answer, the problem being that most of the time, we don’t know what the question is? As such, in New Zealand, where Organ and Tissue Donation is voluntary, the question of whether to donate is understandably as complex as our own national ideologies of death practice. What inspired me to make ‘The recipient’ was the desire to explore the profound questions that donation poses of those who might use it, and in that exploration find a way to talk about the larger subject of Donation and mortality today.