Life Support: The Gaza documentary preserving doctors’ eyewitness accounts of Israel’s genocide
Anam Alam writes in The New Arab on 8 July 2026:
As Israel’s genocide in Gaza surpasses 1,000 days, the world still has limited access to the daily realities inside the enclave, with Gazans themselves becoming the primary witnesses documenting its devastation.
Journalists from around the world have been barred from reporting on the ground, while even some politicians have been denied entry. Among the few independent witnesses able to document events are the doctors who have entered Gaza to treat the wounded.
Since the genocide began, humanitarian medical teams have worked inside the enclave’s devastated healthcare system, witnessing the destruction firsthand rather than through screens. Some doctors captured their experiences on phones and cameras — footage that became the foundation of the documentary Life Support.
The film chronicles two years of Israel’s war on Gaza through the eyewitness accounts, footage and experiences of international doctors who volunteered with emergency medical teams between November 2023 and 2025.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Daniele Rugo, known for his feature documentaries — including The Soil and the Sea, the first cinematic record of mass graves from Lebanon’s Civil War — Life Support brings together an incredible creative team, including Robert Del Naja and Masahiro Hirakubo, as well as executive producers, including Susan Sarandon, Melissa Barrera, Farah Nabulsi and Sawsan Asfari, among others.
Daniele says the aim was to share an accurate account of the doctors’ experiences working in Gaza. “The eyewitness accounts of the doctors were some of the very, very few international independent eyewitnesses that were allowed into Gaza,” he tells The New Arab. “We tried as much as possible for the voices of the doctors to be the centre, the engine of the film, as well as their emotional journey.”