Synopsis
A speculative documentary essay connecting the filmmaker’s medical history with post-Cold War geopolitical shifts and their impact on contemporary politics. The film originates from the filmmaker’s diagnosis with a rare form of cancer, T-cell lymphoma, a condition that causes the failure of the immune system and the body’s defence mechanisms. The medical treatment unfolds in three stages: 1. Remission of cancer cells; 2. Immune transplantation; 3. Adaptation to a new immune system. The film adopts these three stages as a framework to mirror the collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by the introduction of the free-market economy as a new system of governance, and a prolonged process of adaptation marked by chronic side effects. Far from claiming that biology offers a model of perfect social order, Graft Versus Host uses medical terminology to grasp complex geopolitical transformations of recent history and the layered roots of today’s unsettling political reality.
