On Call

“Shall we start with the uninsured?” someone suggests, as Doctor Jean Pierre Geeraert begins his workday. “No one here has insurance,” is his laconic reply. This is the consulting service at Avicenne Hospital, a hospital in the Paris suburb of Bobigny. It’s the only place for miles around where newly arrived immigrants, often in the country illegally or waiting for documentation, can come. Sober but understanding, the doctor listens, assisted by a psychiatrist. His patients are troubled not only by headaches or insomnia, but also struggle with bureaucracy, forms, long lines, the search for somewhere to sleep – and all this on top of the traumas of fleeing their homes and leaving their families. Equally sober, Alice Diop scrupulously films these sessions, the camera never leaving the consulting room. At times there’s hope or a joyful moment of success. But much more often, there’s simply the knowledge that a painkiller or anti-depressant will have little effect on the sorrow and powerlessness of these displaced people.