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...

Walk on the wild side: Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs on their epic hiking movie The Salt Path

Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir about her and her husband’s 630-mile trek around England’s south coast has become a film. Its stars, makers and Winn talk floods, fog and forgiveness

‘I have played a lot of powerful, well-dressed women in my career,” says Gillian Anderson. They flash before your eyes: Margaret Thatcher (The Crown), Eleanor Roosevelt (The First Lady), Emily Maitlis (the Prince Andrew/Newsnight drama Scoop) – as well as the formidable sex therapist in the Netflix hit Sex Education, a role that led to her being inundated with dildos from over-enthusiastic fans. “These are all women in control of themselves and their environment. Any time I have an opportunity to steer against that, particularly lately, it’s of interest to me.”

There is steering in another direction, and then there is the screeching handbrake turn represented by her role in The Salt Path, adapted from Raynor Winn’s 2018 memoir of homelessness and hope along the coastline of England’s south-west. Playing Winn, Anderson is shown making a single teabag stretch for several cuppas, withdrawing the final £1.38 from her bank account, and warming her blistered feet by a pub fire. A typical day begins with her peeing in the undergrowth. It’s a far cry from Agent Scully in The X-Files.

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