Wall To Wall Sells New Docudrama to RAI

LONDON, October 17: British production and distribution
outfit Wall To Wall has sold the two-hour docudrama Beating Death, examining the world’s first heart transplant, to
Italian network RAI 3.

Originally commissioned by the Discovery Network in the U.S.
as a docudrama and by Channel 4 in the U.K. as a fully dramatized film, Beating
Death is available in both formats.

Beating Death tells
the story of how, on December 3, 1967, in a small hospital in Cape Town, South
Africa, a surgeon named Christiaan Barnard shocked the world by cutting out the
heart of a living man and replacing it with the heart of a “brain dead” young
woman. Barnard carried out the operation in total secrecy and no other surgical
event, before or since, has provoked such publicity and acclaim—nor
aroused such condemnation and controversy. The docudrama is hosted by leading
heart transplant surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz and stars Rupert Graves, Ben Miles and
Darrell D’Silva.

—By Irene Lew