Das Wunder von Kapstadt (2022)

In 1967, doctor Lisa Scheel is working in Berlin to establish herself as one of the first women in surgery. She hopes Professor Kohlfeld will take her onto his heart-transplant team. But Kohlfeld chooses a male colleague instead—a colleague who, at a meeting called at short notice, presented Scheel’s work as his own findings. Disappointed, Scheel turns away from Kohlfeld and travels to Cape Town to see Christiaan Barnard, who is also researching heart transplants and whom Kohlfeld regards as a rival in the race to perform the first human heart transplant. There, she initially sees the apartheid regime as glaringly unjust and befriends the Black surgeon Hamilton Naki. Barnard thinks highly of Naki’s surgical skill and lets him work in the laboratory, but has to keep this strictly secret from the hospital management. Officially, Naki works as a gardener. Scheel passes Barnard information she has overheard from her rival on Kohlfeld’s team, thereby helping bring the operation to success. However, because of her outspoken opposition to apartheid, she is denied the chance to take part in the first heart transplant. She can only contribute to the operation alongside Naki from a darkened room next door.