Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma (2007)

Leaving his young family behind in Toronto, Canada - where he's a university professor and doctor - Orbinski returns to Africa, revisiting the past and engaging with the present. He hopes that here, in the place where he witnessed humanity literally torn apart, he can rediscover the true heart of humanitarianism.

In Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma, Patrick Reed's feature-length documentary, Orbinski travels to war-torn Somalia, the first place he was posted with MSF in 1992; then to Rwanda, where he was MSF Head of Mission during the 1994 genocide. Finally he goes to Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, where it seems humanitarian dreams go to die.

Filmed in an intense vérité style, Triage presents a unique view of the world through the penetrating eyes of Orbinski. He refuses to turn away when confronting troubling memories or realizing disturbing truths and, in the most unlikely of places, he finds where both tragedy and nobility.

National Flim Board of Canada 2008 -- 88 minutes

This is an extraordinary documentary. Don't miss it. Excellent for premeds and young doctors.