Lost Cells

12 september 2025

h. 15:00

International Contest

Brief Synopsis:

“A gift so precious, you can only offer it once” was the promise Cryosave, a Swiss multinational and global leader in stem cell banking, made to hundreds of thousands of new parents. For a few thousand francs, the company offered to store their newborn’s umbilical cord blood, an insurance policy against more than 80 illnesses, a safeguard for the future. But behind the brochures lay marketing schemes, hidden commissions, and a lack of oversight. In 2019, Cryosave abruptly went bankrupt. Without notifying its clients, the company quietly transferred over 300,000 stem cell samples to a lab in Poland. Since then, many parents have been fighting to recover what they believed was safely stored.

TRAILER

Director: Valeria Mazzucchi, Antoine Harari
Production: Point Productions, RTS (co-production), Arte (co-production)
Producer: David Rihs
Editing: Christine Hoffet, Valentin Rotteli
Cinematography: Thomas Szczepanski
Duration: 64′
Country: Switzerland
Year: 2025

Director’s Notes:

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