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From the beginning of her illness, filmmaker Puck de Leeuw keeps a video diary. At the beginning of this intimate self-portrait, after an x-ray of her lungs, she is told: small-cell lung carcinoma. Lung cancer. The doctor: 'It will probably be over within a year.' Next, we see De Leeuw at home, assisted by homecare and helpful friends, neighbours and relatives, and in the hospital. De Leeuw celebrates her last, forty-eighth birthday and does not hesitate to film how people help her go to the bathroom and how she quarrels with friends. She seeks support from a clairvoyant friend, who draws her aura, and from an alternative doctor, who suggests it is not cancer, after all. She reacts to her approaching end with resignation, irony, sorrow, self-mockery, fear, anger, hope and despair. She describes her physical deterioration, but especially her mental reaction, manifested in the daily lighting of a candle for herself. First she wished for recovery while doing so, later she only wishes for a day without pain.

Credits

Sound Design
Production company
Van der Hoop Filmproducties
TV company
IKON TV
Distributor NL
Van der Hoop Filmproducties

Title: Een jaar of minder
Year: 2006
Duration : 59 minutes
Category: Short Documentary
Edition: NFF 2006

NFF Archive

You are now in the NFF Archive. The archive contains contains information on film, TV and interactive productions that were screened at past festival editions. The NFF does not dispose of this material. For this, please contact the producer, distributor or broadcaster. Sometimes, older films can also be found at the Eye Film Museum or the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

Stills

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