The incredible short film Do No Harm, from New Zealand filmmaker Roseanne Liang, is today's Staff Pick Premiere over at Vimeo. You might be familiar with Roseanne's work as the mad brains behind the hit comedy webseries Flat3. It's wonderful. Do No Harm is very very very very very different. But also amazing.
The brilliantly bloody 12-minute action film, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of a single-minded surgeon who will stop at nothing to save her patient when violent gangsters storm in to halt a crucial operation. It's tense, thrilling, and ridiculously entertaining.
Check it out:
Liang says Do No Harm was inspired by a story that her sister told her, involving the Hippocratic Oath -- the medical oath sworn and held sacred by physicians.
"She's a surgeon in real life, and one night while she was working in the ER, this guy came in critically injured from an attack by a mob of people ... because he'd fatally injured a child," Liang tells Vimeo. "My sister told me how she literally had to repeat the Hippocratic Oath to herself as she operated on the man. It wasn't her job to be his judge and executioner -- it was her responsibility to be his physician. I found that tension of oath versus justice deeply fascinating."
A feature remake of Do No Harm is being optioned for development. Meanwhile, Liang, who was named one top female filmmakers to watch by The Hollywood Reporter, is directing the action thriller Fuse, centered around a government assassin who has developed split personality disorder. You should be excited.
More here: Staff Pick Premiere: armed with a scalpel and a black belt
