WAMG Interview – Ric Esther Bienstock: Director of TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE – SLIFF 2013

Ric Esther Bienstock is an Award-winning Canadian filmmaker who has been producing and directing documentary films since 1990. She’s known for addressing social issues in her documentaries like SEX SLAVES, an investigation into the trafficking of women from former Soviet Bloc Countries into the global sex trade and EBOLA: INSIDE AN OUTBREAK which took viewers to ground zero of the Ebola outbreak in Zaire. She’s tackled lighter subjects in films such as such as PENN AND TELLER’S MAGIC AND MYSTERY TOUR.

Bienstock has garnered dozens of awards for her films including a U.S. Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, an Edward R. Murrow Award, an Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, 2 Geminis, a Genie, a British Broadcast Award, a Royal Television Society Award, an Overseas Press Club of America Award, a Gracie Award, 2 Cine Golden Eagles, 2 Gold Hugos, a Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award from the IDA, 2 Hot Docs Awards, a Gold Worldmedia Award and a Cable Ace Award. She must have one crowded mantle!

Her newest film TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE – narrated by director David Cronenberg – takes viewers on a gritty and unflinching descent into the shadowy world of black-market organ trafficking: the street-level brokers, the rogue surgeons, the poor men and women who are willing to sacrifice a slice of their own bodies for a quick payday, and the desperate patients who face the agonizing choice of obeying the law or saving their lives. Thousands of organs are bought and sold every year on a black market that flourishes in dozens of countries where the rule of law is a hostage to the dollar sign. “Tales from the Organ Trade” – which moves from Manila to Istanbul, from Colorado to Kosovo, from Toronto to Tel Aviv – tells the story of the sellers of illegal organs and their often-conflicted First World buyers, exploring the legal, moral, and ethical issues involved in this complex life-and-death drama.

TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE will be playing at the St. Louis International Film Festival this Saturday, November 16th, at Washington University’s Brown Hall at 6:00pm. This is a free screening. Director Ric Esther Bienstock will be in attendance and will moderate a Q&A after the film along with Rebecca Dresser, professor of ethics in medicine at the Washington University School of Law.

More details can be found at Cinema St. Louis’ site HERE

http://www.cinemastlouis.org/tales-organ-trade

Director Ric Esther Bienstock took time to answer some questions about her film for We Are Movie Geeks before his appearance in St. Louis.

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 14th, 2013

We Are Movie Geeks:  Have you  been to St. Louis before?

Ric Esther Bienstock:  No I have not but I’m very excited about coming.

WAMG:  How important that was to you when you tackled a subject matter like the one in TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE, black-market organ trafficking?

REB:  The last film I did was about sex trafficking, which was a very different kind of subject. Black market organ trafficking is often talked about in the same vein but it is interesting in that it is generally populated by people who are law-abiding citizens. So while the trading and harvesting of human organs sounds so heinous, the people that perform the procedures are breaking the law, but they are trained anesthesiologists, surgeons, and doctors and I just thought it was an incredible black market trade that had a different texture than arms trading or sex trading, or drug trading and I was very curious to see how it transacted and how it would draw people who are generally law-abiding to do something like this.

WAMG: The black market organ trafficking is of course unregulated. What are the biggest dangers of buying or selling organs on the black market?

REB: There are lots of dangers. First off, it’s populated by brokers. You still have to find these donors if they want to sell their kidneys or whatever. It’s usually petty, grass roots, street-level brokers who are finding them for the doctors. There is no guarantee that you are being tested properly, there is no guarantee that the tissue matching is done perfectly, there is no safety net for the people who sell organs or for the recipients either. If something goes wrong, they don’t know who to turn to. In the film I went to the Philippines and you see these men with very big gashes down their sides and we don’t have to do the operations like that anymore, there are laparoscopic ways of doing this now. The black market is, by definition, bad and the only thing that really surprised me is that I totally understand someone desperately wanting to live. I can understand that. I for the people that are selling them, it’s not the worst thing in the world and I wasn’t expecting to feel that way. I met some people who were subsistence living, maybe earning just enough to some rice on the table and they’d never be able to save up for anything for the rest of their lives and one of these guys said to me that he’d sold his kidney and bought a house and some means of transportation for himself and this was a classic example of someone who was smart with his money, and obviously healthy enough to donate and I look at that and think that that’s not so bad.

WAMG: Did you talk to anyone who sold an organ against their will?

REB: No I did not but it does happen sometimes. Now I understand the rhetoric in the media when I read all the article and reports about this subject. I follow a story that involved a huge prosecution in Kosovo. There was a notorious international organ trafficking ring there a couple of years ago. If you look at the mainstream American press news article, they all characterize this as wealthy westerners harvesting the organs of the poor and the poor being coerced. I set out to track down all the players from one single operation in Kosovo, from the recipient to the surgeons, to the doctor to the donor. I went to eight countries. These people were scattered across the globe and I wanted to show what brought them all to this small clinic in Kosovo. I was surprised when I tracked down the donor, by getting her passport because her passport was evidence in this case. She was in Moldova and she was said she was paid what she was promised, she knew exactly what she was doing, yet the prosecution and the media characterized her as having been coerced. So I questioned the prosecutor on that and he said, and I’m I not defending the actions of the surgeons, but the donors are considered coerced by their own poverty meaning they’re poor so offering them money for their kidney is coercive so by definition trafficked because they’re doing something illegal. For me that’s a bit of a semantic game. All these apocryphal stories of forcing and trafficking, I would say the lion’s share of the black market organ trade sits in this space where people are living in abject poverty who are desperate and the recipients are desperate to live. I don’t think that we do the subject matter justice by painting it in black and white terms because then we’re not trying to solve the problem.

WAMG: The Kosovo case that you mentioned, is this where you interviewed Dr. Yusuf Sonmez?

REB: Yes

WAMG: How did you get him to talk to you? Was that easy?

REB: He’s been dubbed “Dr. Frankenstein” and “Dr. Vulture” by the media and he’s been arrested 16 times by Turkish authorities and is wanted by Interpol. I did actually get him to talk. I tracked him down in Turkey and it’s a very silly story, but of course when I convinced him to meet me for coffee, he did not want to be in the film. He saw no value ion being ion the film. The case was happening in Kosovo so Turkey would not extradite.  That’s why he did not go to trial for this case and is still considered a fugitive.

WAMG: Is he still working?

REB: He is not working because, as he told me, it’s too dangerous if he gets caught. Many of these surgeons have a very good cover story. All who give away their kidneys sign a paper that says they are doing so for altruistic reasons. They have to. There’s a pretext to it being above board. I interviewed a guy in the United States, in Philadelphia, who sold his kidney on Craig’s List! He lied to the ethics committee in the hospital and said he was giving it away altruistically so I think it’s happening more than we think because people are desperate. There’s a real dire shortage of kidneys. Dr. Sonmez was interesting because when I met him, I expected it to be real clandestine but I met him for dinner and he was there with his father and mother and wife and children so it was a very uncomfortable dinner for me because I was trying to explain what I was doing with this film in front of his parents. He initially said that he would not talk to me and the next day we met for coffee and he agreed to do it. I asked him why he changed his mind and he said because his mother trusted me.

WAMG: Do you think he may have regretted talking to you?

REB: You have to see the film. I don’t think he regretted it. He was very disingenuous in the interview. There was really much value in meeting him. He’s a character, I felt that. But he basically said he just did the surgeries and he didn’t know what was happening. We know that that’s not true but it’s still interesting because he was a much respected surgeon in his country. So was the Israeli doctor I interviewed.  These are people were at the top of the fields in their respective countries and of course they’re doing it for the money but I just ask myself if it’s only the money that they’re risking imprisonment for and their reputations are suffering for. I don’t have any answers in the film but I wanted to pose questions and take viewers through the same ethical journey that I did where I was starting to question my own ethical assumptions about this issue.

WAMG: How did you get narrator David Cronenberg involved in the project and had you been a fan of his films before this collaboration?

REB: We’re both Canadian and both live in Toronto so of course I’m aware of his work and I respect his work enormously. I needed narration in this film. It would have been very difficult to do without it, there was too much to explain. I didn’t want a classic, traditional narrator. That would have felt wrong. The film is a bit gritty and investigative. I want someone to help tell you what you need to know. I love Cronenberg’s voice. It’s not typically narrator-y. And the association with body horror and body discomfort just felt like a wink to the subject matter. I had finished the film when I contacted David Cronenberg and I knew the film that sat in a bit of a different place than a film that was about pure exploitation.

WAMG: TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE did play at Fantastic Fest in Austin, which is a horror movie festival. Did you think it would have played at a fest like that had Cronenberg not narrated it?

REB: I was unable to go to Fantastic Fest but we called them when they said they wanted the film and told them that this was a really serious documentary and they said that they were showing some documentaries and they really liked it. I suspect that if Cronenberg had not narrated it, they might not have thought of it. Having said that, the response we got at people at Fantastic Fest was fantastic!

WAMG: Yes, and I think because of Cronenberg, TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE may be exposed to a different audience than it might otherwise.

REB: Yes, of course Cronenberg is famous in that genre and I think that people that go to a Fantastic Fest might never watch a doc like this. It’s been very interesting.

WAMG: You’ll be speaking in St. Louis Saturday night after your film along with Rebecca Dresser, professor of ethics in medicine at the Washington University – have you worked with her before and what does she bring to the table?

REB: I have not met or worked with her before but I think working with someone who is an expert in ethics is the perfect person to talk with. I had a screening at Princeton and it was with an ethicist, the room was full of philosophers and ethicists, and because that’s where the debate sits, we had a good debate about whether we should regulate this and make it safe for everyone or whether, no, this is harvesting and it will always be the poor that sell their organs and we don’t want to condone that. People who work in ethics and bioethics can actually see the argument through, meaning if we do this, then what happens? It’s a lot fun having discussions after the film. Most people I’ve talked to, and I’ve been to many festivals now, really feel that the film has changed their views. Also it makes them feel uncomfortable which makes me feel like I’ve done my job!

WAMG: You’ve been making docs for over 20 years. Have you ever thought about moving into narrative features?

REB: People always assume that but I haven’t really. I love documentaries. If I wanted do narrative, I’d have to have a script, something that I’ve written myself, something that I’m passionate about and I guess I just haven’t found a feature story that’s been as exciting as the documentary subjects I keep finding.

WAMG: Tell me about your next project?

REB: Right now, I’m taking a breather. TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE took four years to film. I have two teenagers and I want to make sure they’re normal.

WAMG: Good luck with TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE and I hope you enjoy your visit to St. Louis this weekend.

REB: Thank you, I’m sure I will.

Here is a trailer of TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE: