Among the most affecting films you'll see all year comes from healthcare specialist Medulla. Nurses — current and retired — talk about the last words they heard from patients under their care. Some of these are odd non-sequiturs, others deeply saddening messages to relatives not present at the time.
Masterminding this film was the Indian Association of Palliative Care (IAPC), founded in 1994, in consultation with the WHO. The focus is to give terminally ill patients a better death, surrounded by their family and friends and not in the cold unfeeling environs of an ICU. Says Pr a ful Akali, founder - director, Medulla, "The Indian medical system is oriented towards keeping people alive at any cost or discomfort." But in the case of terminal illness, he believes the focus should shift to maki ..
The film has a personal resonance to its creators. Both Praful and his brother Amit Akali (founder of What's Your Problem and chief creative officer at Medulla) lost their mother to cancer 12 years ago. In spite of being very averse to hospitalisation, she spent her last week in a hospital. Praful Akali rattles off the stats and they are quite depressing. Even globally, a mere 10% of people receive palliative care and the number drops to 1% in India. India comes in at a shabby No 40 on quality o ..
The main issue is not enough awareness of what palliative care is. Amit Akali observes, "Even among the educated audience, a very tiny percentage know what it is. The idea was to start a conversation and get it into the vocabulary" to not do a regular film but get real nurses to share." There was little by way of briefing when it came to the shoot, and not too many second takes. Amit Akali recalls the cynicism that's usually so prevalent in advertising was absent: "The whole idea was to allow th ..
Bhat is clear he wanted to leave people with a sugar coated message on a serious cause and didn't expect people to quit overnight. He'd just like the idea of 11 minutes less to be seeded. He recalls, "At the press conference, people said 'stop these Mukesh films'" referring to a particularly grisly PSA that was part of theatre screenings in Mumbai featuring an interview with a terminally ill cancer patient. As of ..
The hoary stat that each cigarette cuts a smoker's life by 11 minutes gets us thinking. Wondering for instance, if the 70 and sometimes 80 year old chain smokers we see, initially started off with a lifespan of 200 or thereabouts. This factoid affected the team at content production house Business of Ideas in a different way, though. Aditya Bhat, founder and creative thinker, Business of Ideas says, "We thought 'what can you do in 11 minutes? And then, what if this guy is a virgin and his last w ..
KV Sridhar, chief creative officer at Sapient Nitro compliments the film on its production and entertainment value but believes it is short on insight. He says, "Prasoon Pandey did a campaign a long time back: 'If you hate someone give them a cigarette.' It's a beautiful insight that makes you think, 'only an enemy will encourage me to smoke'. Since no smoker believes he's going to die, you need something to break that barrier and change behaviour. Entertainment wise it may make people see it bu ..
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