Documentary film “For Love and Life: No Ordinary Campaign”, which was released in Amazon Prime in last week, presents an extraordinary story about a bunch of people trying to make some change in the American healthcare system for themselves as well as many others out there. While its running time is short (83 minutes), the documentary is mostly solid as fully packed with enough enlightenment on its main subject, and you will be reminded more of the importance of the advance of medical care and treatment.

The main focus of the documentary is one couple who has fought hard for their future for many years since one of them was diagnosed to have one of the most terrible diseases known to the mankind. The name of that disease is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Due to some pathological mechanism which is still not specified even at this point, the motor neuron cells inside the brain of ALS patients suddenly begin to die at a certain point, and this serious medical condition leads to the growing weakness of muscles before the eventual death within a few years for being incapable of breathing (We all need some muscle movement for breathing, you know).

For Brian Wallach and his wife Sandra Abrevaya, life had been pretty good for them before that bad news hit their happy life. Both of them were the key participants of Barack Obama’s 2008 US Presidential Campaign, and they instantly clicked with each other when they encountered each other for the first time as contributing a lot to the growing enthusiasm surrounding Obama (How optimistic most of us felt during that old time…). A few years later, Brian and Sandra married and then had two kids between them, and everything seemed to be going pretty well for both of them as they also advanced a lot in each own career in Washington D.C.

And then Brian noticed a little problem in the movement of one of his hands. While he initially disregarded it without much concern, this soon led to more serious medical symptoms, and that is how he came to learn that he has ALS. Both he and his wife were certainly quite devastated because ALS has been regarded as an incurable terminal disease for many years, but then Brian decided to take some active actions for not only himself but also others. Coming to know that there had not been much progress in the medical research on the medical treatment on ALS patients, he decided to organize a non-profit organization for ALS patients and their families, and his wife went along with that plan although she knows too well how much her husband would have to work for establishing and then managing the organization.

At first, the main purpose of their organization was increasing more public awareness of ALS. Along with numerous fellow ALS patients and their family members, Brian and Sandra has passionately worked on how to draw more attention from the public and the media, and they effectively used the social media applications as shown from that famous ice bucket challenges spread around the Internet.

However, as Dan Tate Jr., a lobbyist who also has ALS, pointed out later, the ice bucket challenge worked as much as they hoped, but, just like many other social media events, people mostly forgot about what the hell it was all about from the beginning even before several years passed. To make more changes, they had to convince the US parliament and government to pay more attention to the ALS research, and they also had to persuade National Institute of Health (NIH) to provide more funding for that.

So, again, Brian and Sandra tried to accomplish this goal as much as possible along with their fellow activists including Steve Gleason, a former professional American football player who has worked as an advocate of ALS since his ALS diagnosis as shown in documentary film “Gleason” (2016). They met a number of politicians willingly paying attention to their desperate status, and their voices were certainly heard as the several important laws on ALS patients were smoothly passed in the US Congress and then the US Senate. As a result, many of ALS patients can access a lot more easily to those newly developed drugs in the trial stages than before, and there also come more attention and funding to the ALS research.

Needless to say, the research on ALS treatment is still in research and development stages even at this point, but the documentary points out how desperate Brian and many other ALS patients are as the clock is ticking inside their worsening body day by day. They all are certainly willing to try anything for living and being with their loved ones as long as possible, and they may actually live much longer than expected as hopping from one experimental cure to another during next several years.

On the whole, “For Love and Life: No Ordinary Campaign”, is a powerful documentary on how to bring some more change to the American society and its flawed systems, Director/co-producer/co-editor/cinematographer Christopher Burke did a commendable job of handling its main subject with enough care and respect. Things are still gloomy for Brian and many of his ALS patients out there, but they keep fighting with some hope and optimism, and you will surely learn some valuable life lesson from that.