Award-winning documentary nominated for BAFTA

A “sensitive and moving” documentary filmed at Cambridge University Hospitals has been shortlisted for a prestigious BAFTA television award.

 

The BBC production, called Between Life and Death, is among four finalists in the single documentary category. The winner will be announced at a glittering ceremony broadcast on BBC1 on 22 May.

 

 

 

The BAFTA nomination comes just two months after the film was judged to be the year’s best standalone documentary by the Royal Television Society, which described it as “powerful and sensitively-filmed.”

 

While making the film, director Nick Holt and assistant producer Marina Parker worked closely with staff in NCCU, the emergency department and intensive care to identify families who were prepared to share their stories.

 

They then followed three patients during their time at Addenbrooke’s. One of those to feature was 43-year-old Richard Rudd, who was paralysed in a motorbike crash and left with brain damage as a result of subsequent complications. His family initially told doctors that he would not want to be kept alive – but after a period of waiting, he began to show voluntary eye movement and was able to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions.

 

Speaking at the time, Nick said: “Every day, throughout the country, there are families sitting at loved ones’ bedsides facing an extraordinary life-or-death decision. I wanted to capture that process with all its emotional and ethical difficulties, and Addenbrooke’s was an obvious place as it has one of the country’s leading neuroscience units.

 

“We could never predict how it was going to work – all we really knew was that each day a new series of intensely emotional human dramas unfolded in the 21 beds in the unit. We’d film patients as they came in, then talk to the family to find out whether they were happy to take it forward. I explained it was a journey we’d go on together, but could be stopped at any point, even right up to transmission. Interestingly, not one family said no, and no one ever told us to stop filming, even in their rawest moments.

 

“The experience was life-changing for me. Much of what I held to be true was turned on its head. We often think that if a machine is the only thing keeping us alive then we’d want it switched off, but life and love has this phenomenal pull. You can’t underestimate the life force running through each and every one of us. I’ve realised none of us can know how we would feel unless we were there, in that bed, facing the terrifying possibility of your link to life being severed.”

 

 

 

 

 

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