AIN’T GOT TIME TO DIE
I met Rachel Heisham in Missoula, Montana, two months after she had been given a terminal cancer diagnosis. We decided to make a documentary together - her, in the hopes that she would survive and be an inspiration to people with cancer; me, because I was drawn to her enormous will to live. The process of making this documentary has reverberated throughout our lives. Some moments of our journey together: getting stuck overnight in a wild hot spring when it was 16 degrees outside; getting stuck in snowy mountains looking for wild horses and having to call search and rescue; me holding her hand as an ambulance took her, barely conscious, to the hospital.
Filming has taken me from Montana, to her hometown, Lawrenceville, PA, to Kansas, back to Montana, and then finally, back to Lawrenceville. I have wrestled with ethical questions about how to share representation of someone’s life in a vulnerable position. We have had difficult conversations about whether or not she should seek treatment and what kind, and difficult conversations about whether or not she should try to heal her past familial wounds. Life becomes the film becomes life.
What we have made together, with the help of a very talented editor: a film that distills Rachel’s frantic thirst for life; that sits with the pain she has experienced, both in her body and in her family; that contemplates the power a filmmaker has to represent another; and that accompanies her as she has to face the ultimate challenge of her life.
Team:
Director / Producer / Videographer: Martin Krafft
Editor: Emma Thatcher
Composer: Grant Bloom
Screenings:
Northeast Pennsylvania Film Festival. April 2024. Best Documentary Finalist.
Nawada International Film Festival. August 2024.