Focus Country - Hungary. Semmelweis

Synopsis

Set in 1847 Vienna, the film follows Dr. Ignác Semmelweis, a passionate but short-tempered doctor who delivers babies and performs autopsies daily while desperately searching for the cause of puerperal fever, a mysterious epidemic decimating women in the hospital's maternity clinic. His superior forbids him from pursuing his research and assigns a young midwife, Emma Hoffmann, to spy on him. Despite their rocky start, Semmelweis and Emma develop a romance. When his friend is wounded during an autopsy and dies with the same symptoms as the women in childbirth, Semmelweis discovers the cause, doctors were transmitting infection from autopsies to patients, and the prevention: handwashing in chlorine solution. Half of his peers discredit his findings, yet he continues fighting to prove his theory.