Intensive Life Unit

Doctors Ondřej and Kateřina often touch on the intangible in their work.
In this feature-length documentary, the pioneers of Czech hospital palliative care discuss topics that have essentially disappeared from our lives. Against an environment of robotic medicine and deified white coats, focusing on the disease itself, the human being returns to the centre of their attention. In an intimate conversations, doctors and their patients look for answers to a question that has, unfortunately, been forgotten in hospitals where life ends for 60 to 70% of Czech society: “How does one live a quality life with an illness?”
Over a period of three years, director Adéla Komrzý has documented the Department of Palliative Care at the General University Hospital on Charles Square in Prague. This originated as a pilot project to serve as an example for other hospitals. A team of experts help patients find solutions and make decisions that may be of benefit to them in an era that offers endless possibilities for life to be extended artificially. Because life is not just a beating heart and expanding lungs…