The Mission review – a surgeon saves lives in war-torn Gaza in a visceral portrait of human endurance

Mohammad Tahir and his colleagues operate through bombing and blackouts in barely functional hospitals – but there are moments of relief amid the documentary’s tragedy and gore What this documentary might lack in film-making finesse it makes up for with sheer visceral and emotional impact. British nerve surgeon Mohammad Tahir and his colleagues, who also work the cameras, toil in Gaza’s barely operational hospitals during some of the worst days and nights of the war in the winter of 2024-25. Supported by US-based charity FAJR Global , who provide medical care to the world’s most in need, Tahir operates through bombings and blackouts with a bare minimum of medical supplies, sometimes treating patients lying on the floor in puddles of blood because there are no gurneys. This is often hard to watch, and not just because of all the gore; many of the victims are children, out of whom Tahir and the others dig bullets as well as tiny tungsten cubes, new-fangled shrapnel designed to cause maxi...

Saint Omer director Alice Diop: ‘I make films from the margins because that’s my territory, my history’

Raised in a Paris banlieue, the documentary-maker is now in the spotlight thanks to her Venice prize-winning first feature, based on the true story of a woman accused of killing her baby

“I have a voice that doesn’t carry very well,” says French film-maker Alice Diop, when I tell her I can’t quite hear what she’s saying. We meet in a cafe near her home in the working-class district of Montreuil, on the eastern edge of Paris. It is busy with lunch parties, and the combination of Diop’s French – she speaks fast and quietly – with the occasional crashes of crockery isn’t ideal for discussing the complex, challenging new film she has made.

Still, if Diop’s speech doesn’t carry acoustically, it’s a different matter with her artistic voice. After a significant career as a documentary-maker, Diop’s feature film debut, Saint Omer, is resonating worldwide. It won two awards at the Venice film festival last year and was France’s entry for the best international feature at the Academy Awards, making Diop the first black woman ever to represent France in the Oscar race. Diop is suddenly in the spotlight in a way she never imagined.

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