WMPSC

I wanted to walk out of Life Support many times. I mean that as the highest recommendation. This essential documentary is about Gaza between October 2023 and September 2025. In its stark simplicity, it is also deeply racking.

With international journalists blocked from entering Gaza, straight away a second responsibility fell to the international doctors who volunteered to treat the civilian population. As well as their medical duties, they would be the only independent witnesses.

Now, through contemporary video and later interviews, director Daniele Rugo pieces together the accounts of surgeons, paediatricians, obstetricians and more. Their vantage is that of Gazan hospitals, which soon become de facto shelters for vast numbers of displaced people — as bombs fall and operations are conducted on crowded, bloody floors.

Our brief glimpses of the suffering are enough. We hear it said for the first of many times that things cannot get worse. Chief among Rugo’s interviewees are Canadian paediatric intensive care doctor Tanya Haj-Hassan, Oxford-based gastrointestinal consultant Nick Maynard and Victoria Rose, a London plastic surgeon who will spend many hours through the next two years treating nightmarish wounds. As with all the medics on camera, their words are clear and measured. More than once, they speak of their guilt at being able to leave Gaza again, unlike Palestinian colleagues.