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 maximum damage.

With his matinee-star good looks, rock-steady composure and air of unruffled competence, Tahir makes an excellent guide to all this mayhem. For the most part he soldiers stoically on, but the cool melts when, for instance, he discusses how he had to remove a random jawbone embedded in a patient’s wound. Later on, he treats a little girl who has lost an arm in a bombing; he manages to reattach it after the family find the severed limb in the rubble of their home. The film could have easily started to feel like a numbing, endless procession of tragedy and bloodshed but the film-makers wisely offer a few moments of respite, such as a sequence where Tahir and his fellow medics enjoy a day out at the beach. Likewise, a scene where he teases a medical student bent over her textbooks briefly lightens the load of gloom.

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