It doesn’t function any supersonic jets or pink carpets and Tom Cruise is nowhere to be discovered. Regardless of this, a brand new movie, The Physician has been racking up accolades on the international film festival circuit.
That stated, if there was an individual within the European hashish business who has all the time taken a “freeway to the hazard zone” albeit of a medical sort, it will be Dr. Franjo Grotenhermen.
The film, directed by Eduardo Hernandez, is a biographical take a look at the lifetime of Franjo up to now. And that’s actually an fascinating journey. Per Hernandez, “Anybody who is aware of Franjo is aware of that his story is unbelievable. He’s an individual who has devoted his life to combating for the rights of sufferers and pushing the boundaries of science. As a filmmaker, it appeared to me that most people would have an interest.”
Who Is Physician Franjo Grotenhermen?
The elevator pitch on Franjo, as he insists on being known as, is simple to do in simply three phrases. Pioneering hashish physician.
But that is nonetheless a reasonably radical proposition, notably in Germany, but additionally, relatively sadly, nonetheless just about in every single place else too. Consequently, this description additionally means an awesome deal, even at this time, because the medical career as an entire nonetheless struggles with overcoming the stigma surrounding the efficacy of the plant.
Grotenhermen’s is actually a dramatic story. From the start, Franjo, who additionally suffers from a debilitating situation himself, has put himself on the forefront of the struggle. In Germany that’s nonetheless a extremely hazardous place to stay and work.
“The aim was to achieve an viewers that isn’t educational and that doesn’t know what medical hashish is,” stated Hernandez by e-mail when reached by Excessive Occasions.
The movie takes place through the 10th Convention on Cannabinoids in Medication, proper earlier than the onset of the Pandemic in late 2019. The IACM, which Franjo additionally helped discovered, has been some of the influential world medical hashish conferences for a number of many years. The Physician additionally options interviews with amongst others, famed Israeli hashish researcher, Dr. Raphael Mechoulam.
Thus far, The Physician has made the competition circuit (even successful fairly just a few awards) and is about to have its world premiere this Friday, in Amsterdam earlier than persevering with on a global journey that’s actually taking its message around the globe.
Medical doctors Are Nonetheless on The Frontlines of The Medical Battle
Whereas it’s sadly nonetheless not frequent data, medical doctors have continuously paid a heavy value for being hashish advocates. This was actually true in locations like California as prescribing medical doctors may have their licenses stripped for prescribing the drug (because of the Clinton Administration, each earlier than and after the historic vote in California in 1996).
That menace has by no means actually gone away in lots of locations. Certainly, in Germany during the last 5 years since “medical reform” medical doctors are visited continuously by the police who’re nonetheless conducting “investigations” that each one too typically results in interrogations of each sufferers and medical doctors if not arrests, legal expenses, and jail time.
Franjo has by no means wavered from the problem or the trail. Certainly, he went on a starvation strike in 2017 over the restrictive language within the first medical hashish reform laws in Germany, which to this present day prevents nearly all of sufferers who want the drug from accessing it (legally).
It’s typically a thankless journey.
The Physician, past being a biographical profile of some of the fearless medical crusaders for hashish reform, can be an academic look, and from a medical and scientific perspective, of the significance of reform on the eve of what’s hoped might be full and remaining German hashish legalization.