How Dentsu Creative Celebrated the ‘Second Chance Champions’ of the World Transplant Games

“It’s the greatest event that nobody knows about.” Those were the words used by Liam to describe the World Transplant Games. 

The World Transplant Games sees over 40 countries and 2800 athletes compete in sporting events such as athletics, swimming, basketball, darts, volleyball and even lawn bowls. The athletes span across gender, race, religion and age and the only thing they all have in common is the fact that they have all received successful organ transplants.  

When the team at Dentsu Creative first heard about the games, a passion for storytelling cycled through the company. Everyone was in agreement that the stories of these Second Chance Champions were ones worth telling.

According to Sarah, the entire process taught the agency how to behave in different ways; not least including learning the ins and outs of documentary-making from Liam. 

“The agency came together with such passion. It could have been challenging but it wasn’t because we had so many good resources around us,” she said. 

Liam, meanwhile, spoke with infectious passion about this documentary, describing the stories as “rich, incredible and inspiring”. “We saw an opportunity to create real social impact with this documentary”, he tells LBB. “A chance to raise awareness surrounding the topic of organ donation”. 

Sarah said, “The statistics are pretty grim. There are thousands of people on waiting lists and more on dialysis, but last year only 454 people received an organ transplant.” 

“Talking to your family is vital, when you have made your wishes known the chance of you being able to donate your organs is 90%, if you haven’t it drops to 40%. At the end of the day, families get the final say regardless of whether you’ve put your name on the organ donor registry or not.” 

The creation of this documentary has been seen as a chance to start these difficult conversations within families, to give families tangible evidence of how truly life saving organ donation is. Ingeniously, it combines a rarely talked about topic with sport, one of Australia’s most beloved interests. Both Liam and Sarah made a point to confirm that Second Chance Champions isn’t a ‘depressing hospital story’ but rather a ‘story of hope.’ 

Second Chance Champions tells the stories of eight organ recipients and family members of organ donors with each story being uniquely inspiring in its own way. The tale of Rezwan Mohammed, for example, is about a Rohingan refugee who grew up in a Bangladeshi refugee camp and captured the hearts of Liam and Sarah. Liam described Rezwan as someone with a “harrowing story, but a wicked sense of humour.” 

Liam remembers that at the beginning of the process, Rezwan didn’t want to be filmed. He would duck in and out of the camera, and avoid one on one interviews at all cost. “It was really important to me to set up relationships with them,” he said. 

Eventually, he managed to get Rezwan to sit down for a one on one and when he did so, he noticed just how uncomfortable he was. Liam then decided to turn everything upside down. 

“I told him to direct me. So I sat down in the chair, and he asked me if he could say action. I said yes. He said it, and asked me a bunch of questions and from there we developed this close friend relationship”, recalls Liam. “It got to the point where we were acting like school friends. You know when your mate was getting into trouble and you looked at them in the middle of it and you both would start to laugh?”.

Liam also touched on the story of Rowean, an indigenous mother who had lost her 20 year old daughter. Rowean found it difficult to talk about the tragedy but found strength within Liam. 

“We were having this conversation and she was getting really emotional. So I asked her what she would like the people who received your daughter's organs to know, if you met then? And she lit up, right away. She started to talk about her daughter's quirks, the fact that she loved bushwalks and pulling the duck face in photos” he said. 

Liam's choice to develop and invest time into these relationships has created a documentary that is full of heart. Liam embraced everything thrown at him during the process, the joy, the tears and the laughter.

Second Chance Champions is all about what life is like post-operation. It is a story not about the end of life in a hospital bed, but rather about the beginning of a life renewed. Liam told one last story about Rezwan and a Moldovan man who towered over him that really drove this point home. 

Rezwan was struggling with discus, so this big burly man helped him out and on his bicep was a tattoo that read, ‘I will keep you safe.’ 

“To me, the tattoo really spoke to what the entire film is about,” he said and just to confirm Liam’s passion for the documentary and the emotional effect that these stories have, Liam went out and got “I will keep you safe” tattooed on his ribs. 

To Liam, this tattoo was a sign of two things. 

Number one, a reminder of how to treat others. A reminder to create safe spaces where people are comfortable amongst each other.

Number two, a reminder to cherish a second chance