Who would donate a kidney to a stranger? The director Penny Lane would – and she made a “confession” about it – out of love for documents

The famous anthropologist Margaret Mead was once asked what she thought was the first sign of the emergence of human civilization. In their view, this was not evidence of tool-making or agriculture, but rather the discovery of a human leg bone from many millennia ago: a person’s femur, which was broken but healed. Mead suggested that this is an indication that one or more other people assisted the seriously injured person and helped with recovery.

What Mead identified as signs of civilization are based on empathy and altruism. These are values ​​filmmaker Penny Lane can support. In her documentary Confessions of a Good SamaritanLane discusses her decision to donate a kidney to a complete stranger – someone she will never meet or know – a stranger who would die if he didn’t get a kidney transplant. The film was screened as part of Deadline’s “For the Love of Docs” virtual event series.

Lane acts as her own main character in the documentary.

“The journey is very much a psychological journey for me, trying to answer the question of why I did what I did and really ask myself about it,” she explained in a question-and-answer session after the show . “That’s why I had to take the lead, because I could have said, OK, I’ll make a film about another donor’s altruistic donation… But I realized I couldn’t do that because I had to donor put through. so much questioning for.” so long.” a long time. Who would I have done that to? Nobody else. I just thought it would be really bad for anyone but myself.”

Lane said she didn’t initially plan to make a documentary about her kidney donation, but was eventually persuaded by confidants to do so.

“A friend of mine…actually said, ‘But you can save more lives!’ “You will save more lives if you tell people about it.” And I thought, yeah, but I really don’t want to do that. I kind of ignored it, and when somebody told me that a second time, I was more willing to hear it,” Lane recalled. If I’m honest, as an artist my goal is not to save lives. If I wanted to save lives, I’d be doing something else professionally. Ultimately, my job as an artist is to create art that I think is interesting and that only I can make. It just felt like it was interesting and only I could do it.”

She added, “It just felt like I just said no… The film itself felt as much of a calling as the donation ultimately did.”

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, between 2010 and 2015, only about 3 percent of kidney donations in the U.S. were “altruistic” or “non-targeted,” meaning the donor made the donation to benefit someone other than himself or her knowledge. – someone who would probably have died without a transplant. It’s a pretty heroic act, but Lane said she doesn’t want her film to come across as a plea for her canonization.

“The hardest part of editing was finding the right tone,” she explained. “On the one hand, I wanted it to be funny and almost a bit cynical. I actually assume that some of the audience will approach the subject with little cynicism. I want to meet people where they are, but I also thought, ‘But this is great.’ This is the most profound thing I have ever experienced in my life.’ I don’t want to lose sight of how amazing and beautiful and the whole experience was spiritually fulfilling and wonderful.”

Watch the full conversation in the video above.

For the Love of Docs is a virtual Deadline event series sponsored by National Geographic in association with the International Documentary Association (IDA). The series continues with a new film showing every Tuesday until December 12th. The next film will be shown on November 21 Latest newsDirected by Heather Courtney, Princess Hairston and Chelsea Hernandez.