Burkitt review – fascinating film intertwines lives of patient and trailblazing surgeon

Director Éanna Mac Cana combines a diary of his cancer treatment with a probing portrait of Irish paediatrician Denis Burkitt who gave his name to the condition

In Éanna Mac Cana’s probing documentary, two lives are entwined with fascinating results. The seeds for the film were first planted when Mac Cana was diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma, a rare and aggressive cancer; his diaristic videos capture the loneliness of his treatment, spent within the cold, yellow walls of hospital rooms. Through the lens of his digital camera, he occasionally takes in the distant, blurry sight of tower blocks, or his mother cycling to the clinic. The world outside appears impenetrable; all the while, the film reaches beyond what the eyes can see.

Then, turning to the past, Mac Cana juxtaposes his lived experience of illness with the life story of Denis Burkitt, the trailblazing Irish surgeon after whom Mac Cana’s condition was named. From archival materials as well as interviews with experts and Burkitt’s family, Mac Cana charts the trajectory of the scientist’s career in Africa. Cartography is, in fact, central to Burkitt’s research into the disease: like his father, a keen amateur ornithologist who documented bird migration, Burkitt traced the geographical distribution of the then-unknown paediatric cancer in the continent.

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