It was in 1995 in Padua that I carried out the first liver transplant from a living non-blood relative donor. Not a piece of liver, as was later done with blood relatives, but the whole liver, the whole organ between two people immunologically different and distant. Billions of cells, of codes, of stem cells from one person to another. The recipient knew who their donor was, which is usually impossible when the organ is from a cadaver. In that case, in order to avoid the risk of deliberate replication of the donor’s characteristics and illicit contact and requests, no-one can know who donated the organ; not their history, not their face.
DIRECTOR NOTES
Lotus Flower is the story of this exceptional transplant and what happened to those involved and their families afterwards. What happened to their lives now growing together like two different plants in a single pot. To the many characters who, for their own benefit, including religious, deny the dreams of those who get in their way.
It’s a story in which every character has their own tale to tell, their own personal dream, often still not yet realized. It’s a story that looks back, searching among the thoughts, looks, silences, questions and answers of who’s afflicted by the fear of not making it. Then the meeting that changes their lives, and love: the only thing capable of giving the strength for radical change, even making one seem like the other.
As if the organ was really able to transfer feelings and behaviors. The images follow one another with careful changes in perspective. We go forwards and backwards in the story, trying to penetrate the soul of each character through the voiceover which often wonders about the cruelty of nature which is insensitive to human suffering. Quick images, sometimes flashing by like in Malick’s greatest movies, without ever discovering what happened. Leaving the public to decide what happens for themselves.Music, images, looks, hands, bright light, pitch black darkness and infinite spaces form the many frames that comprise the work. Details which seem to escape but which actually fill up a life, reality, the world around us.​
