Gantenbein

The documentary Gantenbein is about a guy called Gijs, who has a had a brain operation which went terribly wrong... so wrong that he had to learn his own life through fotographs. His wife showed him pictures: 'it is me over there, so that must have been parts of my life.' Gijs cannot read a book anymore and moves through life like Gantenbein. ( he was a german teacher once and loved the book Gantenbein of Max Frisch, in this book a guy pretends tt be blind- but he isn't really). Gijs has two kids and a wife - he didn't recognize them after the operation. The weird thing was: he was operated on his left side of his brain and after the operation he was paralized on the left side of his body - then his wife realised that something MUST have went terribly wrong during this relatively simply brain-operation. She is sueing the Dutch hospital for around ten years now.. but nobody will admit something went wrong. All the neurologist ( only a few in Holland) support each other. It is a well made and interesting documentary, which made me cry. Babs Meier The documentary was on dutch television