TIDF ran from 6-16 March2025.
The Greek documentary “Sculpted Souls” by Stavros Psillakis won The Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation Award, the FIPRESCI Award and the Youth Jury Award for the Best Greek Film.
“Sculpted Souls” describes the journey of Swiss dentist Julien Grivel who travelled to Athens twice yearly from 1972-1998 volunteering to repair the teeth of lepers. Leprosy is now referred to in medical circles as Hansen Disease and its sufferers Hansenites. Norwegian doctor Gerhard Hansen proved in 1874 leprosy was not a hereditary disease but an infectious one.
We travel along with Grivel in Greece as he reminisces about those he has met and the stories that they have told of suffering while maintaining their dignity society did not afford them.
As we encounter his patients none express a sense of hopelessness but rather of existing with pride and fortitude. Grivel is grateful for his encounters with the Hansenites remarking their stories and attitudes gave him a sense of calmness and courage to face his cancer diagnosis. Grivel’s view is that without bitterness in your life there can be no real victory. To be human is always being in a beneficial relationship with other humans without crushing or humiliating them. Through his interactions he began to appreciate the beauty of so many of his patients. They lived in the shadows but they stood upright. They taught him courage, to ignore the petty things in life and not to fear death.
Through his dialogues with former patients and archival footage of them we are told about the treatment of leprosy in Greece including the “medical and social prison” of Spinalonga which operated from 1904-1957 and the more modern Varvara Infectious Disease Hospital in Egaleo, Attica.
If there is anything summing up the philosophy of Grivel it is when he is in a library established in honour of one of is patients saying,” I love libraries because we see so many different and contradictory worlds co-existing with each other”.
RKS 2025 Documentary Film Rating 88/100.
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