In Safe Hands

The plot is based on a representative true story. It follows Anna, a student, as she collects from a hospital repository the heart of her Uncle Carl, who died as an infant half a century beforehand, and guards it on its journey home to her bereaved grandfather.

This poignant, understated short movie recreates what was, for hundreds upon hundreds of New Zealand families, the solemn duty of reclaiming children's, very occasionally adults', hearts from the medical establishment at the start of this century. The hearts had been removed, usually without consent, from the deceased bodies of their relatives and stored for medical training, many of them for decades, until the existence of this secret, centralized "library" was exposed in 2002.

"In Safe Hands" won 'Best Independent Short Film' in the NZ Film Awards 2012. Its quiet dignity stands in stark contrast to the callous disregard of the rights of families on the part of those who had displayed compassion for the very same people while their cherished ones were undergoing treatment. No voice of outrage is raised on behalf of the re-traumatized. No-one's reputation is openly challenged. There is no condemnation of the medical establishment's hiding behind legalities, of the different deceptions that it practiced, of its self-interested show of empathy.

Instead, what we see and hear transpire between Anna and her grandfather is genuine as well as convincingly unsentimental. The dialogue that she exchanges with Jill, tasked with returning hearts to relatives, is hollow pleasantries and a quick dispatching of formalities. There are simply no words, beyond perhaps the irony of the film's title, to convey the enormity of the mistreatment. In a short glimpse of subtle film-making, the powerless are left to gently grieve.