JAPAN PRIZE International Contest For Educational Media

JAPAN PRIZE 2004 : Program Details

"I'm not afraid of dying but I'm so sad to leave my children and wife behind and cause them sorrow", Thomas tells the camera.

Thomas is 47 years old, a devoted husband and the loving father of two small children. He is suffering from cancer and his family have been told that it is going to kill him - the question is just when? In a week? Six months? 2 years? Every day is a struggle for life and a struggle to maintain hope. The camera follows Thomas and his family in their unequal struggle to defeat illness and death or finally accept it. They are kept afloat by their one final goal; to go on a last vacation as a family before it is too late.

All human beings will dye someday, but to talk about this issue is still a great taboo in the modern society. This program helps viewers relate, identify, and reflect upon our own death and loss and brings more openness for the dying process. This program was also selected as the best educational documentary at Basel_Karlsruhe_Forum on educational and societal TV and Media in 2006.

The Number of His Days is an intense and moving account of the last months of Thomas, a 47 year old ambulance worker in Denmark. The process of dying is a biological fact of life for all societies and cultures, but this programme invites us to compare how we live the last days of our lives. We engage in the moving scenes of Thomas with his wife and young family, and with close colleagues at work, and we begin to understand that close relationships have the power to transcend the facts of death. This programme has very high production values, with a subtle but effective use of music. By avoiding some of the clichés of television's portrayal of dying (there are no scenes of being a hospital patient, and we do not witness the death of Thomas) the programme achieves a poetic form which helps us to understand the importance of respect for the way we endure this universal process.