15 years of Kantha Bopha

Gachot's central protagonist is the famous Swiss doctor Beat Richner, who has done so much for children in Cambodia. In 1975, the young pediatrician is working in a children's hospital in Phnom Penh, but has to leave the country due to the invasion by the Khmer Rouge army. He returns in 1991 and discovers that the country's children are suffering due to a catastrophic health system. Richner builds four hospitals and one clinic for HIV positive mothers in the next 15 years, in which over 7.2 million children have been treated. For the children of Cambodia, Beat Richner's hospitals are a substitute for the failing health service. The filmmaker Georges Gachot has been following the work of Beat Richner since 1996, producing three feature-length documentaries. The first two of these, filmed in 1996 and 1999, are included in this special edition DVD. The new movie, made in 2007 and drawing on more than 100 hours of footage shot over a period of 11 years, looks back on the 15-year history of this doctor, cellist and builder of hospitals.