Revelations: The Exhumer

An observational documentary following the work of exhumation specialist, Peter Mitchell, whose idiosyncratic profession has already seen him exhume 30,000 bodies - sometimes individuals, sometimes whole cemeteries - for reburial in new graves. He was the man tasked with the exhumation of 15,000 bodies from the ground beneath St Pancras station, to make way for the cross channel rail link; and he's moved countless other bodies at the request of relatives. Digging up the dead raises profound ethical and religious questions, and taps into our very sense of ourselves. This film follows Peter over several months, as he supervises the controversial exhumation of a Christian cemetery in Egypt: where some of the bodies have been buried for as little as just a few months; and where he also oversees a mass exhumation job at an old churchyard in Scotland.