Living Amongst Lions

The diagnosis cancer throws a patient to the wolves. Neither the chemical processes inside the body nor the doctors who try to stop these processes can be controlled easily by the patient. In Leve blant løver, the Norwegian director Sigve Endresen follows three young cancer patients - Ingunn, Lars and Kristin — for eighteen months on their tour along doctors, new examinations, new prognoses, good news and bad news. The title of the film refers to a passage from the famous novel Out of Africa by Karen Blixen, in which the writer tells about her meeting with a farmer who fights lions by poisoning their prey. Blixen considers this method cowardly and unworthy of both lion and hunter. While hunting a lion, the hunter should be brave enough to expose also himself to the danger: ‘Only that which can die, is truly free,‘ Blixen claims, and proceeds to go lion hunting herself. Sigve Endresen recognized a similar fearlessness in the three youngsters who have to face death far too prematurely, even if theirs is a forced, involuntary fearlessness. The threat of death compels them to permanently relinquish their careless, ‘immortal‘ lives. The three tell about their pain, despair and loneliness, but also about unsuspected maturity, joie de vivre and serenity. Like in his previous productions Store gutter gråter ikke (Big Boys Don‘t Cry) and For Harde Livet (For Your Life), director Endresen again points the camera at young people who are forced by extraordinary, difficult situations to give their lives a new form. And although the title Leve blant løver suggests a romantic struggle, the film itself paints a sober, realistic picture of life in a pressure cooker, in which the menace of death also makes people live their lives more intensely. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)