THE MISSION: A documentary from inside Gaza’s hospitals filmed by medics on the frontline

The Mission, the first feature-length documentary to be filmed inside Gaza’s hospitals*, will be released globally on Apple TV, YouTube Movies and Vimeo On Demand on 23 June. The Mission follows the acclaimed British-Iraqi nerve surgeon Dr. Mohammed Tahir as he embarks on his third humanitarian mission to Gaza in October 2024. The film is a personal, unfiltered account filmed over four months.

Amid waves of casualties flooding overwhelmed hospitals, Dr Tahir fights tirelessly alongside his colleagues to save civilian lives. This is the human story behind the relentless bombardment, capturing the raw intensity of Gaza’s operating rooms. This urgent and unflinching film stands as a historic testament to human courage and compassion amid profound catastrophe.

“I deal with patients from zero all the way to old age. I’ve operated on hundreds of peopleand seen thousands. I operate every day from morning till night. Everything here is destroyed. Buildings, streets, normal life – it’s wiped out. …If you came and you took a 10-minute tour of Gaza, you would be left speechless,” says Dr. Mohammed Tahir.

Filmed secretly by two members of his medical team, The Mission captures the raw, brutal reality of Gaza’s operating rooms in real time. With so many journalists killed – at least 270 at the last count – and no access for western media, medical professionals are often the sole witnesses, risking their lives to document the truth.

The film shows the enormous sacrifice, bravery, humanity, and compassion of the doctors and health workers carrying out impossibly dangerous work – more than 1700 have been killed since October 2023. Dr Tahir and his team work under near impossible conditions, with frequent power cuts, no ICU, and a near total absence of pain relief, antibiotics or anaesthetic.

Among hundreds of his patients is Mariam, a 10- year-old-girl whose arm was torn off when her home was attacked. Over a series of complex surgeries, Dr Tahir battles to save her arm, performing the first ever replant of its kind in the history of Gaza. He holds the hand of a boy whose entire family was killed, amputates the shattered leg of another child, and treats hundreds more with all manner of casualties – mangled limbs, burns, shrapnel injuries.

Dr Tahir stays in Gaza till the end of January 2025 and witnesses the historic scenes as the long hoped for but short lived cease-fire comes into effect. In a final act of solidarity he walks to the North of Gaza with the hundreds of thousands of Gazans returning home after 15 months of forced displacement. A shattered landscape reduced to rubble by relentless airstrikes forms the backdrop. He has now been banned from re-entering Gaza.

Dr. Mohammed Tahir has undertaken three humanitarian aid missions to Gaza since October 2023 with FAJR GLOBAL, an American medical charity based in Texas, spending more than seven months in south, central and northern Gaza, alongside Palestinian colleagues in some of the territory’s most overwhelmed hospitals.

“The Mission is a plea from Gaza to show the world what has happened. The unique footage they capture provides a historical record of events in real time,” says Mike Lerner, Roast Beef Productions. “It shows the best of humanity, even while showing victims of the worst. It is a tribute to Dr Tahir and his colleagues’ burning dedication to help the people of Gaza overcome each and every obstacle. ”

The Mission is an independent documentary, produced by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Mike Lerner and Roast Beef Productions. In addition to directing alongside the Gaza Collective, Lerner filmed with Dr. Tahir in Jordan and London, before editing the film in London with long-time collaborator Colin Moxon.