The Kindness of Strangers

A Phoenix pick

Although absurdly sensationalized in the likes of Coma and Monty Python's the Secret of Life, the process of organ donation and its impact on the lives involved has remained recondite. These subjects are humanely probed in Maro Chermayeff's harrowing, heartfelt The Kindness of Strangers. With its fascinating profiles of successful recipients (the grade-schooler who received a new liver at the age of six months) and donors' surviving next of kin (the religious couple who remain ambivalent about distributing their dead teenage daughter's parts to save the lives of others), the film creates suspense in its chronicle of a man ravaged by hepatitis whose health deteriorates as he awaits a suitable donor. Alternately morbid (a look at the vulture-like task of tracking down potential donors is both chilling and exciting) and life-affirming (the mother of the young liver recipient recalling a failed first transplant is a guaranteed tearjerker), Kindness proves that fact, if not stranger than fiction, is at least more emotionally rewarding. Screens at the Copley Place Monday, September 14 at 7 and 9 p.m. and Tuesday, September 15 at 12:15, 2:15, and 4:15 p.m.

-- Peter Keough

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Film Festival Feature Films

| With Friends like These | Digging to China | Monument Ave. | Rounders | Lolita | God Said, 'Ha!' | My Son the Fanatic | The Mighty | Shattered Image | Gods and Monsters | Xui Xui: The Sent-Down Girl | Without Limits | Clubland | The Inheritors | The Celebration | Urban Ghost Story | The Boys | Living Out Loud | Stuart Bliss | The General | The Kindness of Strangers | Dancing at Lughnasa | Central Station | The Human Race | Double You Street | Oberwasser -- By U-boat to America | The Witman Boys | The Cruise | Confession of a Sexist Pig | Melting Pot |

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More Boston Film Festival information, film descriptions, and show times

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