Kevin Brianton, Senior Adjunct Research Fellow, La Trobe University

Det andet offer was released in Denmark in 2025, and the film is now showing at the Scandinavian Film Festival in Australia under the English title: Second Victims. The title of the film, Second Victims, refers to the condition that care workers suffer when patients are hurt or injured by their actions.

The film opens with a series of targets positioned next to the central character, Alexandra, played by Özlem Saglanmak, as if to suggest she is on a firing range. The image is perfectly apt, as the film is set in an understaffed stroke unit, where there is unrelenting pressure, a lack of resources, and near-exhausted staff. In this environment, Alexandra, who portrays a highly skilled and self-assured neurologist, appears to have unwavering confidence. She seems to be juggling a massive number of patients with complex conditions, all demanding immediate attention, while also dealing with the hospital’s financial problems, along with personal pressures that combined would turn any normal person into a frazzled wreck. She initially deals with one desperately sick patient in a highly efficient manner. Racing between patients, she examines and releases another young patient who appears fine. This calm facade is shattered when a second and apparently minor case spirals into tragedy due to her critical misjudgment.

Director Zinnini Elkington follows Alexandra around the ward with a hand-held camera employing long takes, which gives the film a cinema verité or documentary edge. This hospital world appears to be out of kilter, but she somehow manages to maintain control. She must then deal with junior doctors, whose advice she spurned, panicky surgeons, nurses, hospital administrators who want everything resolved immediately, and even police investigating an assault.

Alexandra faces the horror of professional disgrace and personal disintegration as she deals with the grief of a patient’s relatives and her own. Özlem Saglanmak delivers a strong performance as Alexandra, as she moves through the various stages of guilt, denial, and eventual acceptance. The sterile and cold hues of the hospital are punctuated by deliberate splashes of red in scenes where Alexandra faces her most unstable moments, effectively mirroring her internal turmoil.

The supporting cast, including Trine Dyrholm as the grieving mother, provides some astonishing emotional depth. One scene where an organ donor form is given to the parents, minutes after their son’s death, has an awful ring of authenticity to it. The system demands that forms be filled out, regardless of the emotional consequences.

^{Robert Donat appears as a revered doctor in The Citadel (1938). Image courtesy of Emovieposter.}

The film represents a departure from the traditional notion of a doctor possessing almost superhuman ethics, knowledge and ability. In The Citadel (1938), a young doctor, played by Robert Donat, struggles between wealth and serving a poor mining community.   He ends as a noble and heroic figure serving the people of the community. Also released in the 1930s, the Dr. Kildare series was a popular collection of films that morphed into a highly successful TV show, centered around an idealistic young doctor, Dr. James Kildare, and his mentor, the gruff but wise Dr. Leonard Gillespie. Doctors represented a fixture of certainty in the community. Their skills are never really questioned. Many shows have followed this trend.

Second Victims goes beyond these traditional medical dramas to create a story about accountability, compassion, and the shared vulnerability of humanity. As one character says, “The only thing we don’t have control over is death. Not even doctors can help us with that.” Director and writer Zinnini Elkington uses Second Victims to examine a system under immense pressure, studying the individuals caught within it with great sympathy. A quote near the end of Second Victims is that every doctor has a “graveyard.” It is a reminder of the pressure medical staff face on a daily basis.

Second Victims examines a health system and the individuals caught within it. There is no readily identifiable villain; it is a blur of accountability, including our impossibly high expectations of the health system. We are asking doctors to be gods, and we set out to destroy them when they are just fallible human beings.

Second Victims is currently being shown at the 2025 Scandinavian Film Festival. Kevin Brianton was a guest at the premiere of this film.