Thousands of people are waiting for a donor organ in Germany alone. Only part of it can be helped. But what if a very rare solution emerges for two families?
Strasbourg (dpa) – “This program is not suitable for children, young people or sensitive viewers,” warns Arte. Because this film goes to the kidneys – in both senses of the word.
Caren Blumberg and Jan Kempe have severe kidney disease and need an organ donation. That alone puts a strain on them and their families. But towards the end, the Franco-German broadcaster shows very vividly how a transplant takes place on Friday evening (8:15 p.m.): with cuts, blood and separated organs in sterile metal dishes.
It is not easy fare with which Arte viewers can usher in the weekend. But it’s an important issue. According to data from the German Organ Transplantation Foundation, the number of post-mortem organ donors fell by two percent last year compared to 2019 to 913. The number of organs donated after death fell almost similarly to 2,941, about half of which were kidneys. But the need is significantly greater: at the end of 2020, 9,200 patients were still on the waiting list for a transplant.
Caren Blumberg and Jan Kempe are also waiting. Your respective partners are not eligible as living donors. This is a less common form of organ donation in which an intact kidney is removed from a living person – as in the case of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Büdenbender.
But Blumberg’s and Kempe’s doctor found that there is the very rare possibility that the values of Caren’s husband and Jan and Jan’s wife and Caren match. Organ donations, so to speak, cross-wise, are possible. And so the drama also bears the title “Leben über Kreuz”.
It makes the hurdles of such an undertaking clear in a very impressive and approachable way, even if the constellation itself is unlikely to be understood by many people. But the supposedly perfect solution is no reason to be ecstatic – because the two couples don’t know each other. Before making a donation, the Kempes and the Blumbergs have to convince an ethics committee that they are so close friends that this friendship would survive even a death.
Approaching and getting to know each other reveals wounds and vulnerabilities. It promotes internal family disputes and even leads the married couple apart. “Think about who wants to save your life here,” says Sebi Blumberg at his wife. He almost presses the doctor with the words: “I won’t watch my wife die.” In Caren, on the other hand, desperation grows: “When death comes so close,” she says, she just wants to live.
Benjamin Sadler and Christine Hecke as the Blumberg couple and Annette Frier and André Szymanski as the Kempes play their characters convincingly and vividly express swirled emotional worlds. The conversations between the sick, between the healthy, between the women and the men all take up different aspects before such a life-changing step.
And the members of the ethics committee also fluctuate between agreeing – when the four people concerned are all ready – and the question of how voluntary such a decision can be when the foreign kidney is needed so urgently?
In addition to these moral questions, heavy fare and a lot of abs, the film also provides a few ups – especially towards the end. A bit of drama is built in for this, which in real life is likely to be as likely as the chance of a cross-donation. But that’s probably due to the genre.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210310-99-762725 / 3
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