Feb 5, 2025

World Premiere at Slamdance 2025. Friday, February 21 at 7:15PM in the LA Times Theater at Quixote Studios. Additional screening Saturday, February 22 at 5:30PM at Summer & David at Quixote Studios.

“Disposable Humanity follows Cameron Mitchell’s family, who are Disability Studies scholars and filmmakers that have researched the Nazi Aktion T4 program since the 1990s. Through conversations with memorial directors, disabled people, and relatives of T4 victims, they uncover the horrifying truth: that the Nazi Aktion T4 program, was in fact the program where the Nazis trained killing staff and designed the apparatus of mass murder that led to the Holocaust. Disabled people were the first victims to be killed under the Third Reich and in this investigative documentary, the Mitchells reveal how this history has been covered over and erased from international public memory,” says the synopsis.

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‘Disposable Humanity’ – New Film Unmasks Horror Of Nazi Euthanasia

ByGus Alexiou,

Former Contributor. Gus Alexiou is a London-based reporter covering disability inclusion.

Feb 18, 2025, 10:50am EST

Disposable Humanity which has its world premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival this week recounts one of the darkest, most disturbing and yet underreported genocides witnessed in human history.

From 1939 onwards under the auspices of the Aktion T4 program, the Nazis systematically murdered 250,000 disabled people with psychiatric and physical disorders residing in institutions. The so-called “euthanasia program” also targeted many young children who would today be referred to as having learning disabilities or special educational needs. The program was named Aktion T4 after the address of its Berlin headquarters located at 4 Tiergartenstrasse.

At the time, these were dubbed “mercy killings” but the reality was anything but merciful with lethal injections eventually being supplanted by gas chambers and some left to starve to death. The war waged by the Third Reich on disability had its ideological roots in the 1920s writings of German professors Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche who attributed the terms “life unworthy of life” and “human ballast” to people with disabilities.

Disposable Humanity is a directorial debut for Cameron Mitchell whose credits sinc