The Heart of the Emergency Room (2024)

Emergency Ward

This 1959 documentary short is a frank portrait of the daily operations inside the Montreal General Hospital’s emergency ward.

The First Wave

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

Our Body

In a Parisian public hospital, Claire Simon questions what it means to live in women’s bodies, filming their diversity, singularity and their beauty in all stages throughout life. Unique stories of desires, fears and struggles unfold, including the one of the filmmaker herself.

Sicko

A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's 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.

Big Charity: The Death of America's Oldest Hospital

This documentary film includes never-before-seen footage and exclusive interviews to tell the story of Charity Hospital, from its roots to its controversial closing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. From the firsthand accounts of healthcare providers and hospital employees who withstood the storm inside the hospital, to interviews with key players involved in the closing of Charity and the opening of New Orleans’ newest hospital, “Big Charity” shares the untold, true story around its closure and sheds new light on the sacrifices made for the sake of progress.

The Linen

A subdued observation of daily life in a children's hospital. The driver of a delivery van regularly delivers clean linen to the wards where small, tense dramas of life and death are played out.

On the Edge

Things are busy at the Paris hospital where young psychiatrist Jamal and his colleagues work. The place is run down, the staff are exhausted, budgets are constantly being slashed. You know the story, but you’ve rarely seen it conveyed as engagingly as in ‘On the Edge’, which employs a handheld camera and meaningful, artistic interventions to observe the daily routine at the psychiatric ward. The deeply sympathetic Jamal is an everyday hero with an exemplary, humanistic disposition, for whom the most important prerequisites for mental health – and for a healthy society in general – are good relationships with other people. He puts his philosophy into practice by listening patiently, giving good advice and organising theatre exercises based on Molière. Realism and idealism, however, are in balance for the young doctor, at least as long as the institutional framework holds up.

Perfecting the Art of Longing

Cut off from his loved ones due to the strict COVID-19 lockdown at the long-term care facility where he lives, a quadriplegic rabbi is filmed by his daughter while reflecting on love, mortality and longing.

Click to Ransom

A small rural hospital in Japan battles an international cybercriminal gang that is holding them ransom with their stolen patient data.

Madame Hofmann

"Welcome to my life", Sylvie Hofmann repeats this sentence almost all day long. Sylvie has been a nurse for 40 years at the North Hospital of Marseille. Her life is running. Between patients, her sick mother, her husband and her daughter, she has always devoted her life to helping others. What if she decided to think a little about herself? To retire? Does she have the right, but above all, does she really want to?

Hospital City

As debate in Canada and the world rages over health care, Hospital City offers a moving, human portrait of the people whom the issues touch most closely.

On Call

At the consulting service for immigrants at the Avicenne Hospital in suburban Paris, we observe the sorrow and powerlessness of the immigrants who come here.

Letter from a Yellow Cherry Blossom

Naomi Kawase's documentary about Nishii Kazuo, a photo critic. He is the last chief editor for the Camera Mainichi magazine, rushing through his time with Araki Nobuyoshi and Moriyama Daido as provocative artists in the photograph world.

A & E: When Patients Attack

Hospital staff are reporting more violence and anti-social behaviour than ever before. In 2015, 8 staff were assaulted every hour – a new record high. At The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham – one of the UK’s biggest hospitals – they think they have the answer. Here a private security force of 46 uniformed guards, and a sophisticated CCTV system, keep staff and patients safe. A colourful mixture of characters ranging from ex-soldiers, to bouncers, to former elite sportsmen, it’s the security team’s job to keep the hospital running smoothly. With more than 2 million visitors they have to deal with all aspects of crime and anti-social behaviour. All against a back drop of life changing and life saving procedures.

Reimagining A Buffalo Landmark

The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.

When Kim & Aggie Went To Hospital

Kim and Aggie travel to Ealing, West London, to look at the standards of cleanliness and issues of hygiene facing Britain's hospitals. Ealing Hospital has been publicly criticized in the past for its levels of sanitation. But during the last 18 months the hospital's Chief Executive, Fiona Wise, has worked tirelessly to raise standards of cleanliness. Over three months, the hospital opened its doors to the scrupulously clean Kim and Aggie, allowing them free rein to visit all departments to examine cleanliness levels and tackle any problems in their own unique style.

God Vulture and Human

The film explores the subject of organ donation through the lens of transplant coordinators, highlighting their role in the process of organ donation, retrieval and transplantation.

Phases of Matter

Phases of Matter follows living and inanimate residents of a teaching hospital in Istanbul, moving from the operating room to the morgue, between life and other states, the real and the virtual.

Le dernier souffle, au cœur de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal

Plot unavailable

Bliss

After a tragic series of events in his life, Rob discovers the over-the-counter drug known as codeine. The effects of the pill are so strong and addictive, that soon, Rob becomes dependant and consumes them daily. But the less he feels the more he misses, as his life degrades into a deep, dangerous, oblivion of bliss.

Donauspital

The daily workins of Austria's Danube Hospital.

What Did You Take?

Stresses recognition and treatment of drug abuse emergencies, accurate identification of symptoms, and immediate clinical procedures. Presents scenes of actual cases in the emergency room and adjoining physician's offices of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. Viewers observe emergency treatment of patients in the major classes of drugs commonly abused, opiates, depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens. The film demonstrates to health professionals that successful management of drug overdoses can save most lives and avert additional organic and psychiatric complications.

Urgences : Soigne et tais-toi

Plot unavailable

Snapshots of China: Shaoyang Hospital, Hunan

Rare insight into the health work of Methodist missionaries in rural Shaoyang, Hunan Province, South Central China.

Grey Matter

We follow neurosurgeons Clemens Dirven and Arnoud Vincent of the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam in this documentary during the treatment of three patients with a brain tumor.

And Outside Life Goes On

The small regional hospitals of Vevey, Montreux, Aigle and Monthey are closing in favor of the new, larger, more adapted and more modern hospital in Rennaz. As the construction of the new hospital progresses, emergency physicians Eric and Frédérique tell us about their daily life in the face of illness and death.

Kids Corner: Jasper's Hospital Experience

A 1984 special from Kids Corner that teaches kids what happens at the hospital.

El triangle rodó

Plot unavailable

À votre santé

Focuses on the state of the Quebec health system in the early 1970s. This film reveals the harsh reality of emergency rooms. There, medical teams, facing a serious shortage of staff, are facing a real invasion of patients. The technical means, often insufficient, make the task even more difficult.

Harrow Hospital Carnival

Harrow’s extraordinary and opulent pageant, and seaside holidays on the south coast.

Prince George's Visit to Scunthorpe

Prince George, who later became the Duke of Kent, takes in some dramatic scenes in a local steelworks, opens a trunk road, and visits the War Memorial Hospital to open a new nurses' home - where his presence is eagerly awaited by giggling nurses.

Emma's Bliss

Upon being informed that he is fatally ill with cancer, Max, who works at a used car store, steals money which his boss has gained through illegal means. When fleeing from the scene of the crime Max crashes his car. He is pulled unconscious from the destroyed vehicle by a homely young woman, Emma, who lives alone on a farm where Max decides to stay in order to hide from the police and his boss.

23

The movie's plot is based on the true story of a group of young computer hackers from Hannover, Germany. In the late 1980s the orphaned Karl Koch invests his heritage in a flat and a home computer. At first he dials up to bulletin boards to discuss conspiracy theories inspired by his favorite novel, R.A. Wilson's "Illuminatus", but soon he and his friend David start breaking into government and military computers. Pepe, one of Karl's rather criminal acquaintances senses that there is money in computer cracking - he travels to east Berlin and tries to contact the KGB.

The Elephant Man

A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man being mistreated by his "owner" as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of great intelligence and sensitivity. Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick (called John Merrick in the film), a severely deformed man in 19th century London.

We Own the Night

A New York nightclub manager tries to save his brother and father from Russian mafia hitmen.

While You Were Sleeping

A transit worker pulls commuter Peter off railway tracks after he's mugged, but—while he's in a coma—his family mistakenly thinks she's Peter's fiancée, and she doesn't correct them. Things get more complicated when she falls for his brother, who's not quite sure that she's who she claims to be.

Lady Possessed

A pianist takes his ailing wife out of a London hospital at the same time that another female patient there has suffered a miscarriage. Afterwards, the second woman feels empty and withdrawn, and, thinking that getting her away from London will help, her husband takes her to live at a country estate, which turns out to be the former residence of the pianist who left after his wife died. The woman begins to get visions of the wife and her final days; is she becoming possessed by the dead wife of the pianist?

The Flame Within

Psychiatrist finds herself falling for her patient.

The Mothman Prophecies

Reporter John Klein is plunged into a world of impossible terror and unthinkable chaos when fate draws him to a sleepy West Virginia town whose residents are being visited by a great winged shape that sows hideous nightmares and fevered visions.

Modern Times

A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..

Bedlam

George is haunted by the demons of his family's past and tortured by the voices inside his head. He makes one last attempt at recovery by contacting his dead mother's doctor. The doctor's orders; that he attend Bedlam Hospital for a guaranteed recovery. As George checks in he's confronted by a world of society's unwanted, unloved and unstable. Soon, he will discover that all is not as it seems. The hospital hides a dark secret. Welcome to Bedlam...

12 Days with God

A man puts his faith in God when complications arise from two surgeries to remove a cancerous growth from behind his eye.

World Trade Center

Two police officers struggle to survive when they become trapped beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Reclaim Your Brain

Frustrated, because he is forced to produce bad TV-shows, a manager of a TV-station, enters the station and manipulates the ratings, to initiate a TV-revolution.

Who Killed Bambi?

Isabelle, a beautiful nursing student, is starting her internship at a prestigious hospital. She meets Dr. Philip there, feels atracted to him from the beggining and starts suffering from strange fainting; so he calls her Bambi: her legs don't support her. Patients mysteriously start to dissappear from their rooms; so Bambi and Dr. Philip start a cat vs. mouse paranoid game, in order to catch the probable killer.

Irina Palm

Maggie, a quiet retiring grandmother, finds herself helpless as her grandson’s health deteriorates. When one last chance appears, but money is desperately short, Maggie acts to raise the cash in a fashion that surprises everyone but her.

Leroy

A gently humorous look at otherness and xenophobia in modern day German with this tale of a black Berlin teen named Leroy who rediscovers his roots after falling for a pretty white girl and meeting her racist family.