After a bowel cancer diagnosis and life changing surgery, documentary filmmaker Damian Sciberras sets out to better understand what it's really like to live with a stoma.

A Bag For Life is a documentary that opens up the rarely seen reality of this experience. With a community wanting to be represented, over 200 people reached out to tell their stories. Damian draws from his own journey and others living with a stoma, with the film following a handful of intimate stories that reveal the courage, uncertainty and quiet perseverance behind this hidden difference.

Told in the same observational and character-led style as Damian’s award-winning short More Like Paul, the film moves between personal moments of reflection and the everyday experiences that shape who we become after life changes in unexpected ways. The documentary looks at identity, resilience and the ways we rebuild ourselves as we adapt to a new way of life.

At its heart, A Bag For Life is a film about understanding. By opening up these stories, the hope is to soften stigma, encourage compassion and remind people that every life altered by illness or surgery still holds a depth and strength that deserves to be seen.

Life with a stoma is often hidden behind silence, misunderstanding and stigma.

Thousands of people across the UK live with a stoma, yet the realities of life beyond surgery remain largely unseen. For many, the challenge is not simply adapting to a new way of managing their body, but rebuilding confidence, identity and a sense of normality in a world that may not understand what they are going through.

A Bag For Life brings these experiences into the open. Through honest, intimate storytelling, the film gives a voice to a community that is too rarely represented, revealing not only the challenges and emotional impact of life with a stoma, but the resilience, humour, connection and strength that can emerge from adversity.

As awareness of invisible disabilities and the importance of patient experience continues to grow, there is an opportunity to change the way we see life with a stoma, moving beyond thesurgery and the medical device to recognise the person at the centre of it.

Understanding creates empathy, which can reduce stigma, strengthen connection and help people feel less alone. By bringing these stories into the public conversation, A Bag For Life can help create a more informed, compassionate understanding of what it means to live with a
stoma, for patients, their families, healthcare professionals and the wider public.

Damian Sciberras is a UK-based documentary filmmaker with a passion for real stories that challenge perceptions and drive positive change. His work focuses on resilience, ethical living and underrepresented voices. Damian’s drawn to stories that challenge societal norms, whilst promoting compassion and creating empathy.

His documentaries Saved By Jane (2022), More Like Paul (2025) and Where We Once Called Home (2026), explore these themes and have been screened at film festivals globally, winning awards including Best Documentary Short, Best Nature Film, Best Educational Film, Best Editing, Best Sound and a Green Planet Award.

Now mentored by BAFTA Winning Director Alex Lockwood, Damian’s currently developing new documentary projects, including A Bag For Life, which explores what it’s like to live with a stoma, continuing his commitment to bold, character-driven storytelling that reshapes perspectives and inspires action.

After receiving a permanent stoma following cancer treatment in 2020, I found myself living with something that profoundly changed my everyday life. Yet despite this being a growing reality for many, I had never knowingly met anyone else with a stoma. That absence lasted five years until I embarked on the making of A Bag for Life. This pointed not to rarity, but to stigma.

This film exists to help soften that stigma and increase visibility. Not through explanation or instruction, but through presence. Through people being seen as they are, speaking honestly and existing on their own terms.

While I am present in the film, my role is to step back and centre others. The heart of A Bag for Life lies in the courage and vulnerability of the people who choose to share their experiences. Some stories are quiet, some complex, some deeply emotional. All are valid. The aim is not to invite pity, but to create understanding and connection.

There has never been a film dedicated to what it is like to live with a stoma. Film, as a medium, allows space for emotion, silence, intimacy and humanity in a way no other format can. It allows us not just to hear stories, but to feel them. To sit with people, expressions and moments that are rarely given time or attention.

A Bag for Life is part of finding purpose within adversity. A way of expressing creativity while contributing something meaningful to others. My hope is that this film becomes one that can be recommended. Passed on quietly. Offered to someone at the beginning of their own journey as a reminder that they are not alone, that we find ways of adapting, and that endurance and determination can take many forms.

At its core, A Bag for Life is about resilience. It is about making space for stories that deserve to be seen.

A Bag For Life is a film about stomas, but ultimately it is about something much bigger: what happens when life changes in ways we never expected, and how we find the strength to move forward.

The response to the film so far has shown just how many people have a story to tell, and how important it is to create space for those stories to be heard. We are now working to bring the full documentary to life, with funding currently underway.

If this film has resonated with you in some way, we'd love to hear from you. Whether you have lived experience, work within the world of healthcare, are connected to the subject in another way, or simply see something in the film that you would like to help bring to a wider audience, there is a place for you in the conversation.

This is a film being shaped by the people around it. Together, we can help bring these stories into the light and create a film that leaves people feeling seen, understood and hopeful.