A Better Way

The First Wave

2021 · ★ 6.6

When Covid-19 hit New York City in 2020, filmmaker Matthew Heineman gained unique access to one of New York’s hardest-hit hospital systems. The resulting film focuses on the doctors, nurses, and patients on the frontlines during the “first wave” from March to June 2020. Their distinct storylines each serve as a microcosm to understand how the city persevered through the worst pandemic in a century

The Cost of Cobalt

2021

In the cobalt mining areas of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), babies are being born with horrific birth defects. Scientists and doctors are finding increasing evidence of environmental pollution from industrial mining which, they believe, may be the cause of a range of malformations from cleft palate to some so serious the baby is stillborn. More than 60% of the world’s reserves of cobalt are in the DRC and this mineral is essential for the production of electric car batteries, which may be the key to reducing carbon emissions and to slowing climate change. In The Cost of Cobalt we meet the doctors treating the children affected and the scientists who are measuring the pollution. Cobalt may be part of the global solution to climate change, but is it right that Congo’s next generation pay the price with their health? Many are hoping that the more the world understands their plight, the more pressure will be put on the industry here to clean up its act.

Stolen Vision: Counterfeit Medicine in Iraqi Kurdistan

An exposé documentary about the use of counterfeit Avastin in Kurdistan which resulted in many patients becoming blind.

JFK: What The Doctors Saw

2023 · ★ 6.8

Unsettling medical details on the JFK assassination are disclosed by seven doctors who were in the ER during a futile effort to save his life in 1963.

The Camelia Boy

1983

An autobiographical film about Eric M. Nilsson's experiences of Swedish health care and the limits of polite society.

Der lange Weg ans Licht

2008 · ★ 3.5

Edeltraut Hertel - a midwife caught between two worlds. She has been working as a midwife in a small village near Chemnitz for almost 20 years, supporting expectant mothers before, during and after the birth of their offspring. However, working as a midwife brings with it social problems such as a decline in birth rates and migration from the provinces. Competition for babies between birthing centers has become fierce, particularly in financial terms. Obstetrics in Tanzania, Africa, Edeltraud's second place of work, is completely different. Here, the midwife not only delivers babies, she also trains successors, carries out educational and development work and struggles with the country's cultural and social problems.

Sicko

2007 · ★ 7.4

A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States whose main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance, the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.

Predator on the Reservation

2019

FRONTLINE and The Wall Street Journal investigate the decades-long failure to stop a government doctor accused of sexually abusing Native American boys for years, and examine how he moved from reservation to reservation despite warnings.

Las alas de la vida

2006 · ★ 8.9

Dr. Carlos Cristos, 47, is terminally ill. He call a film director and proposes him to record his struggle for to live and die with dignity and without drama.

#MeToo chez les médecins

2023

In turn, the medical community has been affected by the post #metoo movement denouncing sexual violence against women. It was about time. Assaults and rapes perpetrated behind closed doors in doctors' offices have gone unpunished for too long. For a victim, reporting them is almost as difficult as recounting incidents of incest. And the medical councils, which are mainly made up of men, have long turned a deaf ear to patients' complaints. When cases are brought before the courts, the justice system also struggles to prosecute these rapists. Recently, practices and names have been made public, complaints are multiplying, and women are daring to speak out. Could this be the end of complacency towards these criminals in white coats?

Operation T4: A Doctor Among the Nazis

2016 · ★ 6

A reckoning of Nazi Germany’s planned execution of its own citizens with physical and mental disabilities whom they deemed useless to their society.

The Rebel Surgeon

2017 · ★ 9

Portrayal of a surgeon who feels stifled by Swedish bureaucracy and relocates to Ethiopia to practice medicine. In a small field hospital, with limited resources, he uses anything at hand to help the patients.