The evening of 2 December 2004 began as an ordinary school night for the Turner family of Shepparton, Victoria. Seven-year-old Zaidee, daughter of Kim and Allan, spent the night writing Christmas cards to her friends at school, before retiring to bed around 9pm. Not long after, she came running out of her bedroom, screaming about a pain inside her head.

After being rushed to hospital – first the nearby Goulburn Valley Health, then the Royal Children’s hospital in Melbourne – Zaidee died suddenly from a burst blood vessel in her brain, known as a cerebral aneurysm. That year she was the only child in Victoria under the age of 16 to donate her organs and tissues, an act that helped and even saved lives.

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Zaidee donated her corneas to two four-year-old children, her kidneys to a middle-aged mother, her liver to an eight-year-old girl, her heart valve to a newborn baby, and parts of her heart to two infants. Her story is captured in the opening minutes of the powerful new documentary Dying to Live, which has its world premiere this week at the Sydney film festival.

Shortly after their daughter’s death, Kim and Allan Turner founded Zaidee’s Rainbow Foundation, which is dedicated to raising awareness of organ and tissue donation. According to the documentary, more than 80% of Australians say they support the idea of organ donation, but only 36% are registered donors.

“As Australians we are good at giving blood, blankets, money and food. But we’re not good at giving our organs and tissues to people who need them when we die,” Allan Turner tells Guardian Australia.

“We’ve got to change Australia’s attitude towards death and dying, and what organ and tissue donation is all about. Last year approximately 159,000 Australians died, and less than 0.003% of them donated their organs and tissues.”

The film depicts many instances where a single organ and tissue donor transforms the lives of many people. According to the federal government website Donate Life, last year 510 deceased organ donors and their families gave 1,402 Australians a new chance in life.

Dying to Live was directed by the observational Newcastle-born documentary film-maker Richard Todd. His previous film was the pulse-pounding Frackman, a David-and-Goliath story charting the dramatic journey of activist Dayne “Frackman” Pratzky and his campaign against CSG mining companies.

Shortly after completing Frackman and while lounging around in a hotel in Sydney, Todd turned on the television and tuned into Turner speaking about Zaidee and the foundation.

“I looked at him and thought, ‘oh my God, this is an amazing story’,” he says. “His words hit me like a mallet to the head. I gave Al a call and he explained some things to me, educating me about some issues. I remember thinking, ‘this is a problem that’s fixable’.”

Todd hopes Dying to Live will spark a national conversation about organ and tissue donation. Over the course of two and a half years, the film-maker followed a handful of subjects across Australia with various medical conditions, all waiting on an organ transplant list. In Australia approximately 1,400 people are on such lists at any time.

The subjects include Kate (who needs a kidney and a pancreas), Peter (who has been waiting for seven years for his third kidney transplant), Holly (who needs a double lung transplant), Tony (who needs a liver), baby Levi (who needs a kidney) and Henry (who needs a cornea). Unlike the politically charged Frackman, the subject of Dying to Live is not a contentious issue.

“In this debate there are no enemies, even in government,” says Todd. “It is a rare case in which there is bipartisan support.”

Nor, adds Turner, is there debate against organ and tissue donation from a religious perspective: “Every religion supports it but not every religion will carry it through. Every religion will accept a donation but not every religion will give a donation.”

Todd makes no apologies if audiences have a strong response to Dying to Live, saying he “wanted to make a documentary that shames the audience into signing up”.

Turner hopes the film will help educate the public, and hopes that one day awareness of organ and tissue donation reaches the same level as awareness of certain kinds of cancer.

“There’s a cancer for everything, from the top of your head to the tip of your toe,” he says. “Ovarian cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, liver cancer. And really, there isn’t a lot that you or I can actually do to solve the outcomes of cancer. But we can save someone’s life at the end of our life. Or even when we are alive.”

• Dying To Live premieres at the Sydney film festival, which runs until 17 June