BCG GIRL (2025)

Documentary Short

Directed, filmed, and edited by Jessie Barr

Additional editing by Alec Styborski

ABOUT

BCG Girl is a documentary short film that offers an intimate and visceral exploration of filmmaker Jessie Barr’s immunotherapy treatment through the lens of personal experience. The film focuses on the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) treatment—a tuberculosis vaccine repurposed as a form of bladder cancer immunotherapy—administered in six weekly rounds.

Through stark, observational detail, the film immerses the audience in the raw physical and emotional reality of the procedure: a catheter-delivered dose of BCG, the challenge of holding it in for two hours, the ritualistic rotations on the hospital bed every fifteen minutes (the exact length of the film) to ensure full coverage of the bladder lining. These details, clinical yet deeply human, highlight the endurance required in the face of medical intervention.

By centering bodily experience and quiet resilience, BCG Girl sheds light on the intersection of medicine, vulnerability, and the unspoken rituals of survival. It’s an unflinching, poetic meditation on the body’s relationship to disease, treatment, and the act of waiting—both for relief and for the unknown.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

"On March 13th, 2024, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. It’s stage zero. I am so lucky. The doctor said it was a miracle they caught it when they did. I started treatment immediately. I found on June 21st that I am ALL CLEAR. Suddenly, radiant health is here. BCG Girl was a way to process the diagnosis, treatment, and healing. I know this is bizarre, and cancer is scary, but it changed my life. First, when I was 16 and lost my dad to the disease and I ran from it. And now, for a second time, when it visited me, and I had to trust myself to go through it and LIVE LIVE LIVE.”

Mixed media teaser by Wioletta Kulig