Donated to Science – Available Now!


In this film we follow a group of people who donate their bodies to the University of Otago Medical School for students to dissect. We interviewed them while they were still alive and the donors and students gave us permission to follow their amazing journey. We are there when the students meet the body for the first time, we are there when they make their first cut, and we are there when they say their final goodbyes. It might sound morbid, but this film is anything but… it is funny, moving and life affirming.


What the students learn is far more than just anatomy. From the dead they learn life, they learn compassion and they learn humanity. After their two years of dissection the students finally get to ‘meet’ their cadavers. As we show them the original interviews they are forced to revisit their reactions and attitudes to the body in light of the donor’s thoughts and feelings giving the film an emotional climax that it would be hard to equal in any other film, a climax made even more powerful because it is real.