Review by Miriam Scharf
MENA Solidarity is pleased to announce a renewed partnership with Yung Kha Publicity to support the release of the powerful new documentary Life Support, following our successful collaboration on Sudan, Remember Us. As part of our commitment to supporting voices from struggles for justice and liberation, we are proud to help bring this important film to wider audiences. Through the testimony of frontline medical workers, Life Support documents ongoing genocide, crimes against humanity, and the systematic destruction of Palestinian life under Israel’s decades-long system of apartheid.
Directed by Daniele Rugo, Life Support will be released in UK cinemas on 10 July. The film is executive produced by William Parry and features an acclaimed production team, including editor Masahiro Hirakubo, composer Robert Del Naja (Massive Attack), and executive producers Susan Sarandon, Melissa Barrera, Farah Nabulsi, Sawsan Asfari, Asif Kapadia, Paul Weller, Dale Vince, Stephanie Nadi Olson, Erik Olson, and Azeezah Kanji.
The film tells the story of what happened in Gaza between October thanks 2023 and the summer 2025 through the eyewitness accounts of a number of doctors on their visits to Gaza during this period. It was made not so much to record their work as health workers, though it does some of this, but to be the vessels through which the horrendous massive attacks on everything needed to sustain life, the detail of how the genocide is being perpetrated, could be carried the world outside.
It opens with a picture of Gaza in 2022, the packed seaside, the busy markets, the kids going to school, the fishing boats, the harvesting of vegetables. Then the Israeli lethal response to October 7th starts. As the first UK doctors get through the Rafah crossing on 26 December 2023. Destruction is everywhere. The population is living in makeshift plastic tents, in the cold, under hundreds of strikes through the entire night, Israeli ground artillery and warships firing, the sky above Gaza City is orange from constant bombardment.
Later we follow Dr Victoria Rose, with plastic surgeon kit donated from colleagues in Britain, as she takes the bus from Cairo to the Rafah border on March 25th, passing miles of AIDS trucks that can’t get in. The European Gaza hospital where she’s worked before is now unrecognisable, with hundreds of internally displaced people on every floor and stair way. People with severe injuries are being treated on the floor, surgeons stepping over bodies, everywhere is crowded. There are no intensive care beds. But the visiting surgeons working with the Gazan healthcare teams carry on treatments and saving lives.
Two months after the ICJ genocide ruling aid is still not getting in. Sometimes there is no antibiotics, no gauze, no clean instruments and sometimes no electricity. Many patients die after treatment from infection and inability to deliver the care they need.
We see the mass graves after Al Shifa hospital the largest medical complex in Gaza was levelled. As Professor Maynard, one of the main narrators, reminds us no evidence has ever been found that Hamas had any presence there. He reports on his visit April 8th – May 6th 2024. Malnutrition is setting in, affecting even the healthcare teams. Rafah is bombed by the Israelis the next day, cutting off essential international aid.
When Dr Rose returns in the summer the Israelis have control of all the borders. She is allowed only one bag. The European Gaza hospital has been evacuated. She and one other surgeon are allowed in. In the last months everything had been reduced to rubble. There’s no sign of life. The Israelis have banned all sanitary products, there is no soap shampoo or toothpaste. Staff have been displaced from other hospitals more than once. Injuries deaths and displacements have continued for over two years and signs of fatigue and mental health issues are rising. One morning the team mourns an extraordinary young doctor just killed. We see bombs blasting civilians, grieving families, crowds everywhere on the move, women and children with empty pans desperate for food.
The doctors list the civilian infrastructure that has been targeted: the hospitals, healthcare centres, the IVF facility with 4000 embryos destroyed, the only cancer treatment centre, every structure needed to sustain life. One doctor points out if you have cancer with no pain control medicines, that is torture.
By May 2025 70 to 80% of the children the doctors are seeing are malnourished. Formula feed is refused entry to the Israelis. We learn that a US doctor bringing it in had all of to taken off him by the Israelis. A spokesperson at the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians reports that there are now 42,000 orphans. The UN category wounded children with no surviving family (WCNSF) is growing.
The Gaza Health Foundation is set up by Israeli and American staff and the healthcare workers report over 2000 Palestinians killed at these food distribution sites. Even more disturbingly, the pattern of clusters of injuries, one day wounds to the head another day to the neck another day to the right arm, points to Israelis playing a “game of target practice”.
There is only one conclusion from the evidence in this film, that a whole population is being targeted. That we are watching what some Israeli politicians state openly, the aim is eradicating the Palestinians and taking their land.
These health workers, eyewitnesses, are all very clear that governments who are staying silent, who are not calling for sanctions and an arms embargo, and are not ensuring aid gets through, are guilty. The film is a powerful and essential document, exposing the appalling cruelties of the genocide.
At MENA Solidarity, we believe films like Life Support play an essential role in challenging silence, documenting injustice, and strengthening international solidarity. We are proud to support its release and encourage everyone to help ensure these voices are heard as widely as possible.
🎬 Life Support opens in UK cinemas on 10 July. Book your tickets, share the film with your friends and networks, and help bring these vital testimonies to audiences across the UK.
