Harvest
Directed by Paul Kampf
Narrative Feature
Serbia | 118 min | 2025
Harvest is based on an astonishing true story of Johan Von Wagner, a German Baron who is in desperate need of a heart transplant. Being too low on the transplant list, he buys his way up the black market into a position to receive a heart that will save his life.
But when confronted by the wife of the man who rightfully should receive the transplant, Johan has a literal change of heart and decides to live up the rest of his shortened life traveling, starting in Italy. But in the process, he’s kidnapped and a significant ransom is demanded or else he and his best friend will be killed. Johan agrees to pay it, but only if his friend is set free to return to Germany so he can arrange the ransom payments. Yet when his friend is safe and ready to make the payment, Johan confesses his terminal condition to his captors, fully expecting to be killed. However, this is when the story really starts.
Johan wakes up days later on a boat surrounded by people recovering from various operations. This is when he finds out that he’s had a perfectly matched heart placed into his chest and now his captors demand the ransom plus the cost of the heart transplant. After paying their demand and returning to Germany, he begins to have unexplainable dreams about a place he’s never been and people he’s never met, speaking a language he does not know.
Through investigation and due diligence, he realizes that the place he’s dreaming about is Serbia, right after the Kosovo war. With preparation and bodyguards hired, he travels to this place to try and find the man responsible for kidnapping him. In the process of searching in Serbia, his nightmares meet his reality when he finds the beautiful cottage and the woman from his dreams. He’s known her, the land, and the young boy who calls him ‘papa.’ Overwhelmed, he comes to learn that this boy’s father was killed so that Johan could have his matching heart. Moreover, this man is now a part of him and guided him back to the family from which he was taken.
Now driven by a spiritual purpose, he finds the man central to the black market operation and orchestrates his demise. But in the process, the woman in his dreams is killed as a warning to Johan to leave the world of organ harvesting and profit well enough alone. Undaunted, he presses on and actuates a plan that takes out the man responsible for Johan being alive at the expense of so many other people.
However, the young boy has now lost both his parents and only has his aging grandmother to take care of him. Through this woman’s blessing, Johan takes responsibility for the impact on their lives and adopts the boy and gives him a life in Germany as his own son, where they both still live to this day.
Harvest reveals the darkest corners of man’s soul, while also demonstrating the power of our indomitable human spirit. There are few journey’s like the one Johan takes in this story, but it is a profound opportunity to shine a light on real events that will touch the hearts of a worldwide audience.
The book is a Serbian literary treasure and has been translated into fifteen languages and continues publication around the world.