Press Release: Doctors Without Borders’ first film screening in Malaysia

20/08/2022

Malaysia

doctors without borders film screening and sharing in kuala lumpur, malaysi

Doctors Without Borders first film screening and sharing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Malaysia, August 2022. © MSF

Shot in eight different countries, including South Sudan and Tanzania, ‘Selfish’ is an original and intimate documentary that provides a fascinating insight into the world of humanitarians. It tells the complexity of the choices to go on a humanitarian mission through personal experiences.

One of the four makers of the documentary, Laurence Hoenig, said that the idea to make the documentary came from trying to understand humanitarians’ commitment to their work “Why do I leave? Why do I take this risk? These questions are rarely shared and expressed so we wanted to address them throughout the documentary.

“Documentaries on humanitarian world often focus on specific context, crisis or regions, but very rarely on humanitarian workers themselves. It is also reportages and not documentaries that tell the reality of the population hit by crises. It was important to give a voice to humanitarian workers, but also their loved ones, to better understand their commitment and the mechanisms that push people to go on a mission,” she said.

Hoenig also shared that they hoped viewers watching the documentary will get rid of this idea of “humanitarian heroes” and better understand the power of commitment.

The first screening of the film took place on August 19th with subsequent screenings on August 20th. The film screening was followed by a sharing session with Doctors Without Borders’ field workers. Among the field workers, who shared their experience working in Doctor Without Borders projects were Malaysian trauma surgeon Dr Ashok Kannan and anaesthetist Dr Mafietz Mamat. The film screening was attended by some 400 people.

Doctors Without Borders South East, East Asia & Pacific director Paul McPhun said they were happy with the response of the audiences of the first film screening held by Doctors Without Borders.

“What we observed was that the audiences were eager to learn more about field workers experiences and Doctors Without Borders. There’s a keen interest in understanding humanitarian work outside Malaysia and many were also interested in learning how they can contribute,” he said, following the screening. He shared that Doctors Without Borders will continue to do more activities, and engage Malaysians in the work that we do.

Doctors Without Borders is an international, independent medical humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, healthcare exclusion and natural or man-made disasters. In Malaysia, Doctors Without Borders provides primary health care and mental health support to refugees, asylum- seekers, and stateless people through its clinic in Butterworth, its mobile clinics in Penang and Kedah, and in its activities in detention centres. We refer patients to secondary and tertiary healthcare and support an increasing number of sexual violence survivors, including victims of human trafficking both women and men.