The English Surgeon is the opposite of a feel-good movie. Dr. Henry Marsh is a British doctor who, for the past 15 years, has been making trips to Ukraine to help fellow neurosurgeon Igor Petrovich at his clinic. These trips chiefly consist of donating discarded British equipment to Petrovich (surgical drill bits, for example, that cost £80 and are discarded after a single use, which the Ukrainian clinic can re-use for years), and of re-diagnosing countless patients who have been failed by the Ukrainian medical system. Though he often can provide good news — a tumour that was thought to be cancerous actually appears benign, another that was deemed inoperable can actually be removed — the prognosis isn’t always good. Watching Marsh explain through Petrovich’s translation that an elderly woman’s grandson has less than a year to live, or that a 23-year-old woman will be blind and dead within five years, is absolutely heartbreaking. And The English Doctor contains many such moments.

Although Marsh and Petrovich both criticize the inefficiency of the Ukrainian medical system and the wastefulness of the British one, The English Surgeon is largely apolitical. It is simply a document of one of Marsh’s visits to Ukraine and one particularly risky surgery he performs. In keeping the scope so limited, director Geoffrey Smith allows his audience to draw its own conclusions about the two nations, their priorities and the value of a life spent helping others.

The English Surgeon is the first Calgary presentation in the Doc Soup series, which already brings internationally acclaimed documentaries to Toronto and Vancouver. The series will continue in January, 2009.