En av oss

En av oss

Lille Peter som denna kortfilm handlar om träffade vi när vi spelade in ”Naturens hämnd”. Han är med i filmen under sin behandling för den cancer han led av. Prognosen såg bra ut, han överlevde de fem år som utgör en tidsgräns varefter man betecknar patienten som frisk. Det var sjukhuset som ville att jag skulle göra denna film. Dessvärre dog Peter strax efter att filmen var klar. Han hade börjat skolan och lärt sig vissla. Han var stolt att han kunde cykla.

One Of Us

”One of Us is also a sort of spin-off from Na­ture’s Revenge, but for a quite different reason. When Jarl showed the finished Nature’s Revenge to the doctors at Västra Sjukhuset (the hospital in Gothenburg where the scenes with Peter, the boy suffering from cancer, were shot), they considered it to be mendacious. The doctors refused to accept the argument that ”we are what we eat”. The causes of cancer have not been established, they contended.
Since Jarl could not consider altering any­thing in the film, he made a counter-proposal: if he made a short film about Peter, which presented the doctors’ point of view, would he then be able to screen Nature’s Revenge? The doctors accepted this suggestion.
The result was the half-hour-long film One of Us. The film shows how Peter recovers from his cancer and gives the doctors the opportunity to indicate that hospital treatment had been successful. The film gives some cause for hope.
However, it has never been shown commer­cially at any festival and has certainly not been seen on TV. Only FilmCentrum has distributed it and the film has often been used on courses to train nurses.
One of Us turned out to be quite a disturb­ing film as it happens. Shortly after it was finished, Peter suddenly died. The cancer got him anyway, in the end. In a dry, calm post­script, we read that the struggle against the illness was in vain. This is quite stunning for an audience.
This postscript is not in the version which is shown to nurses, however. By request, it has been cut. Nobody wants to know about a reality as terrible as that.
In their version, in their world, Peter sur­vives.
And that is a beautiful thought.
Why let such a trivial matter as Reality get in the way? ”

/Mats Nilsson