The small world of Machteld Cossee

Lisa Blom and documentary maker Hetty Nietsch followed the life of Machteld Cossee for six years. They stayed at the home of Machteld and her family and so recorded intimate moments in their lives.
How do you live your life knowing that one day your world will be quiet and dark? The central figure in the documentary ‘The small world of Machteld Cossee’ knows that she cannot escape her fate. Still, she tries to live a normal life for as long as possible. This results in touching moments as well as frustrations and rows and moments of fear for the future.

Summary
On her seventeenth birthday, Machteld is told that she suffers from Usher Syndrome. At that time she already is hard of hearing, but she will become blind as well. This message is a great blow to the family. Still it is rarely mentioned after this. Her father is a general practitioner and finds it hard to accept that there is nothing he can do for his daughter.
Machteld herself tries to build up an as normal as possible family life with her boyfriend and not to give in to her fear. Machteld: ‘When I think of it, it literally seizes me by the throat. So then I think, what will we have for dinner this evening?’
In the film we see what Machteld sees and hears, how she scans her surroundings, how she slowly becomes an outsider in her own life. How she fights with the desire to give a meaning to her own life. Machteld’s world is small already. There always is that fear: when will my hearing and my last bit of eyesight definitely disappear, making my world as small as it will get?

The documentary was shown earlier at the Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht on Wednesday 1 October 2014.
This documentary had its première on television at NPO2 broadcast by the VARA on 9 February 2015.

*The documentary has Dutch and English subtitling