Mastectomy as sacrifice in documentary 'The Good Breast'

Filmmaker Bernadette Wegenstein, a Johns Hopkins research professor and founding director of the Center for Advanced Media Studies, visited the Festival of Saint Agatha in Catania, Sicily, for her new documentary, The Good Breast, from which this image comes.

Q+A

Saints, mastectomies, and the power of myth

A conversation with filmmaker Bernadette Wegenstein, whose documentary 'The Good Breast' offers an intimate look at surgical breast cancer interventions

The documentary examines mastectomy as a modern form of breast sacrifice, and the Saint Agatha festival celebrates the young Sicilian woman martyred in the third century for refusing the advances of the Roman prefect, who had her breasts cut off. Saint Agatha has become the patron saint of breast cancer patients, and Wegenstein is working on a Saint Agatha documentary titled Devoti Tutti.