The Struggle to Survive

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More About

• Ben Byer
• Roko Belic
• Beijing
• Brain and Nerve Health
• ALS - Lou Gehrig's Disease

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At age 31, Ben Byer, an aspiring actor and playwright from Chicago, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the fatal neurodegenerative disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Like most people with ALS, Byer was given two to five years to live. The stark urgency of that prognosis spurred him to collaborate with childhood friend and documentarian Roko Belic (Ghengis Blues) on Indestructible, in which Byer turns the camera on himself as he confronts the onset of an illness for which there is no certain cause. Though it is anchored in one young man's story, the film contains two separate documentaries. The first intends to raise awareness about ALS and a Westernized healthcare system unable to adequately treat a disease about which so little is known. We follow Byer from his parents' home in Wisconsin to Greece, Jamaica, and Beijing, where he experiments with alternative medicines ranging from marijuana to a controversial brain surgery procedure, and visits with other ALS patients. The second documentary focuses on Byer's struggle with the emotional and spiritual toll of the disease. He approaches patients, doctors, and religious leaders with the same plaintive, unfathomable question: "Why did this happen to me?" Byer's sincerity is the grounding force in a film that serves as a wrenching reminder that the answers to our most essential questions must come from within.
May 30-June 5, 2008