Necrobusiness

Recently, the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza came upon a remarkable story in the Polish city of Lodz. Dead patients were apparently worth more than living ones. A shady story, one that resulted in the biggest Polish police investigation in history. Investigative journalist Monika Sieradzka travelled with two Swedish documentary filmmakers, Fredrik von Krusenstjerna and Richard Solarz, to Poland's second-biggest city to find out who was involved in the mysterious deaths of ambulance patients. No one wanted to talk. No one, that is, until a man named Jacek Tomalski was arrested for trying to murder his competitor, the apparently squeaky-clean funeral director Witold Skrzydlewski. As a result of these events and for a small fee, a colleague from the funeral world named Wlodec Sumera was willing to explain how bereavement works in Lodz. It turns out that ambulance personnel were bribed to get hold of more dead people. This strategy stopped working when the competition began to offer the same ambulance workers substantial sums of money. Slowly but surely, Sieradzka and the filmmakers get people talking, even managing to film in places that would normally be off-limits, like the prison. In the voice-over, Sieradzka explains what she discovers and how. The visually pleasing camerawork, which includes the use of crane shots, gives the documentary the feel of a feature film.