A-Z films
English Surgeon





Angielski lekarz
Dir. Geoffrey Smith | Runtime: 93’ |
Country: UK/Ukraine | Year: 2008 |
Category: Everyday Heroes We Don’t Know; Glance At East: Eastern Europe-Caucasus
Competition: International Competition
Screenings: 12.11

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What is it like to have God like surgical powers, yet to struggle against your own humanity? What is it like to try and save a life, and yet to fail? This film follows brain surgeon Henry Marsh as he openly confronts the dilemmas of the doctor patient relationship on his latest mission to Ukraine.
Henry is one of London's prominent brain surgeons, but despite being a pioneer in his field he stills rides an old pushbike to work and worries himself sick about the damage he can inflict on his patients. "When push comes to shove we can afford to lose an arm or a leg, but I am operating on people's thoughts and feelings... and if something goes wrong I can destroy that person's character ……forever".
The emotional climax of the film is a journey to the South West of the country where Henry visits the mother of a young girl he tried to save by bringing her to England some years ago. Haunted by the failure to save her life, he shares a very emotional meal with Katya, and then visits the beautiful country cemetery where Tanya is buried. With nothing but the wind and the crows around him he confronts what it means to fail, but ultimately leaves us all feeling redeemed because of his ongoing willingness to try and help others where he can.
Geoffrey Smith was born in Melbourne, Australia and was always fascinated by the moving image. Never at ease in “the lucky country” however, he went travelling to find himself and discovered en route a love of listening and story telling.
In 1987 he found himself in Haiti helping to make to make a documentary about the first election there in 31 years, but following the discovery of a massacre of twenty one voters in a schoolyard, he was shot and wounded. Struggling to put his life back together in London, Geoffrey decided to film his journey back to Haiti to find the man who had so nearly killed him. This acclaimed film was subsequently shown on the BBC’s “Video Diaries” strand and was very powerful for the on screen catharsis it intimately portrayed.
Having discovered through this personal project that the camera could be a powerful tool in helping people through difficult periods in their lives, many of Geoffrey’s subsequent films are built around the use of the camera. Winner of numerous awards, director of the acclaimed Emmy winning feature documentary “The English Surgeon”, he has made over twenty two films and is drawn to observational real life dramas where deep ethical and moral dilemmas abound.
His latest feature documentary is “Presumed Guilty”, which was distributed very widely in Mexico and has helped to transform the Mexican legal system.
