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...

Fear, fangs and frying pans: here’s what I learned by watching 13 horror movies in 48 hours

London’s Frightfest shows everything from slasher flicks to arty experiments, though I wasn’t prepared for the number of deaths by kitchen utensils

I’m not sure at what point I realised I was losing my grip. Perhaps it was the moment in existential French psychodrama Pandemonium where a recently deceased motorist finds himself being introduced to hell by a 7ft-tall mega-demon; or it could have been the copious vomiting scene in Cobwebs, which was the third copious vomiting scene I’d witnessed in 24 hours. Either way, by the time I got to the third day of Frightfest, I realised it was time to go home – even though, for the crowds of gore devotees gathered outside the cinema behind me, this was just the halfway point.

Now in its 24th year, Frightfest offers both new movies (often getting their world premiere) and classic chillers, taking in the whole gamut of the genre from straight-up slasher flicks to bizarre artsy experiments. Over five days more than 70 films are shown on several screens, and there is a wonderful community feel: people dressed in Evil Dead and Cannibal Holocaust T-shirts mix amiably with cos-players decked out as mad scientists and vampires.

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