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...

Sasquatch Sunset review – Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg suit up for ingenious Bigfoot comedy

Four mythical hairy creatures, communicating in grunts, inhabit what could be a post-apocalyptic world in the Zellner brothers’ witty and unnerving film

The Zellner brothers, David and Nathan, take their absurdism and futurism to the next level with a brilliant and radical comedy about the secret life of the legendary Sasquatch, AKA Bigfoot, creatures rumoured to be living in the North American wilderness. Sasquatch Sunset is a film to compare with Planet of the Apes, or Watership Down, or even the days of silent cinema. Nonverbal cinema anyway. It’s a plaintive, echoing wail of fear in that big empty forest where no one is around to hear a falling tree; fear of climate catastrophe, fear of the ongoing environmental destruction in which we don’t even fully know what’s getting destroyed; fear of humanity’s own extinction.

And as the movie begins, maybe humanity is already extinguished. We see four Sasquatch loping across a forest clearing: great, hairy, grunting, whooping, ape-like creatures: a female and three males, played without dialogue and in full prosthetic makeup by Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Nathan Zellner and Christophe Zajac-Denek. Two are in a couple and their sexual activity is observed impassively by the other two. One would-be dominant alpha appears to make a sexual move on another, having observed them in the midst of masturbatory self-discovery. He also bullies the others away from a blackberry bush he wants all for himself, on which he appears to get drunk and then hungover. Mushrooms are another dangerous stimulant. At moments of drama and stress they shriek and caper and clap their clenched fists together.

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