Tournées Film Festival: "Hippocrate" ("Hippocrates, Diary of a French Doctor")

October 27, 2016
06:45 PM - 08:35 PM
Hoyt Auditorium, River Campus



Synopsis
Like an episode of ER directed by the Dardenne brothers, Hippocrates combines the human drama that surrounds medical emergencies with a hard-hitting look at the situation of beleaguered French hospitals. Using young medical student Benjamin (played by rising star Vincent Lacoste) as a guide, director Thomas Lilti, himself a doctor by trade, takes the viewer on a "backstage" tour of a labyrinthine Paris hospital where life and death decisions make fuses run short. For his first internship, timorous Benjamin is assigned to the floor run by his father. Here, he meets Abdel (Reda Kateb), an older, idealistic intern who already practices medicine in his native Algeria but must be accredited in France to make a better life for his family. When Benjamin's negligence leads to the death of a homeless patient, the two doctors clash and questions of privilege arise. But they discover their shared values when they go against the system to grant a terminally ill elderly patient's last wishes. While the film provides fascinating insight into the particularities of the French medical complex—particularly in the dingy world of the doctors' quarters, where one marvels at the traditional bawdy murals and gallows humor—it remains etched in the viewer's mind for its candid and sometimes surprisingly funny way of raising universal questions of human dignity and empathy.

Director
Thomas Lilti

Screenplay
Thomas Lilti, Baya Kasmi, Pierre Chosson, and Julien Lilti

Cast
Vincent Lacoste
Reda Kateb
Jacques Gamblin

Details
French
102 min.
France, 2014

Distributor
Distrib Films US

Sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, the Film and Media Studies Program, and FACE Tournées Film Festival. Tournées Film Festival is made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US, the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), the Franco-American Cultural Fund, the Florence Gould Foundation, and Highbrow Entertainment.

Links:
Tournées Film Festival (Fall 2016)
"Hippocrate" trailer (YouTube)

Category: Film Screenings