Théâtre des Opérations, Le

A documentary film on the initiation rites of an apprentice surgeon in the operating block at a university hospital. To witness the steps of this process is to discover a strange and foreign world in which we are transient guests. The operating block is a microcosm nestled in the heart of the hospital machine. There, surgeons, anesthesiologists, surgical technologists, nurses and aids mend lives daily. Chronicles of death and human ingenuity, ambition and pettiness, generosity, fear and black humor are written here. The operating theater stages the vital substance of life.