Loading ...Tuned In: National Geographic to air Syrian War Hospital Doc ‘The Cave’
SOURCE: PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
BY: ROB OWEN
PASADENA, Calif. – Oscar-nominated documentary “The Cave,” about a doctor who works in a subterranean hospital in war-torn Syria, debuts commercial-free at 9 p.m. Saturday on the National Geographic Channel.
A portrait of courage, resilience and female solidarity, “The Cave” follows the work of managing physician Dr. Amani Ballour who faces gender discrimination in an oppressively patriarchal culture that’s also a war zone.
“For about more than four years, we were under bombing, under siege, without food, without medicine, without medical supplies, very few doctors and some volunteers,” Dr. Ballour said via Skype at a Nat Geo press conference during the Television Critics Association winter 2020 press tour.
She said she wants the film to encourage people to support Syrians. “Syrian people are suffering nine years ago, and so far it’s [a] shame of the world that Syrians are being killed now, after nine years. …. And I want people to believe in women power, so to know that women can make change.”
The film shows Dr. Ballour facing gender discrimination. The husband of one patient demands to talk to a male doctor.
“They have specific ideas that women have to be in the home, have to get married early and have children, and cook and clean,” she said. “And they sometimes say you can be a doctor, but a doctor for children or for women in your clinic, but not a manager of a hospital. So they were very angry when I become a manager of the hospital. … Some men shout and say, ‘We want men in this position. We don’t want you.’ And it’s very frustrating.”
More than ‘Okay’
Freeform’s winning new comedy “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay” (8:30 p.m. Thursday) stars Josh Thomas (“Please Like Me”), who also created and writes the show, as a young man who has to raise his half-sisters, one of whom is on the autism spectrum, after their father dies.
“I wanted a show with autism at the center, because I was really interested in it, [and] honestly because I knew so little about it and I thought, ‘This is crazy that I’m so dumb about this,’” said Thomas, 32, who cast actress Kayla Cromer, who is on the autism spectrum, as one of his half-sisters.
“I watched a documentary called ‘Autism in Love.’ And I read the title and I thought, ‘Wait, can people with autism feel love?’ And two minutes later, I was like, ‘That’s the stupidest question. You’re an idiot. Why did you think that?’ And the fact that I was so dumb was interesting to me and then I just spent months and months researching and learning about it.”
Thomas said he chose to make his character an entomologist for a personal reason.
“It’s because once I was in the shower with a boy and he was leaving me. I liked him, but he was leaving me to go into the forest to learn about grasshoppers for the next six months, so I couldn’t see him again,” Thomas said during a Freeform press conference at TCA. “And I thought, that is a really charming job and I’m going to steal it and make it mine on the next TV show.”
