Behind the Scenes of Spiritual Care with Luke Lorentzen and Mati Engel
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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You're listening to the Nocturnous Conversations. I'm Emily Silverman. Today we're joined by two very special guests. Luke Lawrence, an Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, and Matti Engel, a hospital chaplain. Together, Luke and Mati made a documentary film called A Still Small Voice, in which Luke follows Mati during her year long hospital chaplain residency in New York City. The film, which explores the challenges and rewards of practicing spiritual care inside a hospital, won the US Documentary Best Director Award at the twenty twenty three Sundance Film Festival and has been recognized as one of the best ten films of the year by the New York Times. Today, Luke and Mati sit down with me to chat about what it was like bringing cameras into the doctor patient interaction.
How they found the right narrative arc for the documentary. And what it means to bring spirituality and religion into the healing процес. But first, let's hear a clip from their award-winning documentary film, A Still Small Voice.
I recall you saying I cannot believe what my body can endure. And I just needed to share that with somebody. To let them know. And what I felt in that moment through the tears was awe. It was this quiet strength. I checked in for one thing. I got four of the things happened since I've been here. We got pancreatic cancer, covet. Then liver failure, aneurysm, bacteria in the stomach. Did I get that somewhat right? Yeah. Girl, your body. been through a lot.
I'm sitting here with Luke Lawrenceon and Mati Engel. Luke and Mati, thank you for being here today.
Thank you for having us.
It's good to be here. So, this is a beautiful film. It's a slow-paced film that takes its time. It's very intimate. For me, as someone who has spent a lot of time in hospitals, it was nice to experience the hospital in that slower-paced way. Since I usually experience it through a much more uh frenetic lens, and I just really enjoyed it. And I'm wondering how the two of you met and got the idea to make this film.
My sister was doing a lot of work as a hospital chaplain and she was the one that first introduced me to the field and the idea to make a film about chaplains came from talking with her. April of 2020, I started to focus on it more seriously and reached out to maybe a hundred hospitals around the country, trying to meet as many people as I could in the field and get a sense of is there a program out there that would be open to this and invite me to be part of their team.
What is the award‑winning documentary “A Still Small Voice” about?
And I eventually met Amy Strano at Mount Sinai, who runs their program and did a one-week scout shoot where I met Mati. And her cohort, and that's where I met Mati. I remember it very vividly. She has this weight to her in terms of how she approaches the work and the amount of care she puts into it. She immediately stuck out to me as somebody that I wanted to learn from and spend time with. And it took us many months of talking and getting to know each other before we were on the same page and were able to. sort of film some of the things you see in the movie.
And did you know, Luke, that you wanted Mati to be the protagonist of the film and did you have any sense of what the story would be or How did that All unfold.
So no, I did not know. When I first got to Mount Sinai I actually spent one day with every different person in the department. And then from there I decided to focus on the residency, which was still four residents, and spent more or less equal time with all four of them throughout the year, watching them all learn the work in different ways and all grow. And I I really believed that the film was gonna be Sort of a weaving of four different approaches to spiritual care. And when we got to the edit, there was something with Mati's material that really had a depth to it and just a quality to it that we decided to focus on, which was a really big shift for me, for Mati, for everybody.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:48
2
What is the award‑winning documentary “A Still Small Voice” about?
3:48–16:23
3
How did Luke Lorentzen decide to focus the film on the chaplain residency instead of staff chaplains?
16:23–26:39
4
What does Mati Engel define as the role of a hospital chaplain?
26:39–33:20