One thing you notice about the brave doctors working for the organization Médicins Sans Frontières in hellholes and war zones like Liberia and Congo: they sure smoke a lot. They also party hearty, get frustrated and furious, and fall into despair.
And it’s no wonder when you contemplate the statistics: MSF helps 10 million sufferers every year, but that’s out of two billion persons who need medical care. This crisis takes on life when you look into the eyes of a girl who recovers from the agony of a gunshot wound, only to recall that her parents were murdered, or watch doctors trepanning a man with a bullet in his head in conditions reminiscent of a Civil War field hospital.
Documentarian Mark Hopkins does not try to exploit emotions, and he doesn’t need to. You’re left in the position of one exhausted doctor who asks: how can you not do something when you know so much needs to be done?
