A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #362 - Culture - Watch: Alexe Poukine, Save Yourself (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

After two remarkable first films, Sleeping, Sleeping in the Stones, and 
Without Knocking, Alexe Poukine returns with a third feature-length 
documentary, exploring the world of the hospital through a finely 
crafted and brilliant production. "I'm really sorry to have to tell you 
this," begins a young nurse in front of the patient she is about to 
inform of the discovery of a cancerous tumor. The exchange lasts a few 
minutes. Tears stream down the patient's cheeks, the nurse's voice 
chokes. Then the action stops. Everyone is fine. No one is sick.

In this third documentary, Alexe Poukine films a unique exercise: 
simulation workshops in which caregivers, accompanied by actors, reenact 
different dialogue situations with patients, from a routine discussion 
about a health checkup to the announcement of difficult diagnoses. With 
the aim of developing their relationship with empathy, but also of 
questioning their position of power: while the role-playing workshops 
are followed by debriefings allowing for feedback and discussion on what 
happened, in real-life conditions, patients, dependent on healthcare 
professionals, will rarely have the courage to point out a mistake. But 
also, and above all, the hospital environment will not allow them the 
space to do so.

Making Empathy a Political Issue
For while the film begins by being very focused on an individual 
dimension, as it unfolds, it paints a portrait of the entire institution 
of the public hospital. And of the state in which decades of neoliberal 
policies have left it, creating a place that no longer allows room for 
care and empathy for patients. An institution that also crushes those 
who work there. Throughout the discussions and situations, the daily 
lives of healthcare professionals are revealed: entire departments 
relying on temporary workers, crazy workloads, constant pressure, 
burnout, and suicides.

The film's structure essentially gives voice directly to the caregivers, 
who ultimately clearly identify the root causes of the problems, 
particularly the T2A (fee-for-service system), implemented in 2004. They 
describe in detail how the hospital has become a place that seeks above 
all to be profitable, where the question of money has become a priority 
over that of care. One caregiver even ends up saying, "The system would 
work perfectly if we eliminated all the patients."

But this narrative is also complemented by that of the actors who 
participate in these workshops to play the roles of patients. They 
provide an outside perspective, which also reveals a great deal about 
what the hospital system does to the people who work there. We thus hear 
an actor rejoice that the day's workshop is taking place with third-year 
students, when they are "still nice," not yet "hardened" by the hospital.

Connecting the Intimate and the Collective
Through this approach, the director renews the power of her previous 
documentary, Without Knocking: successfully connecting the intimate and 
the collective; managing to film how the sum of individual experiences 
forms social reality. This balance succeeds in both conveying the 
harshness of the healthcare professions and the violence inflicted on 
them by liberalism, but also in outlining a possible outcome: the joint 
struggle of patients and caregivers in defense of a common good: the 
public hospital.

N. Bartosek (UCL Alsace)

Alexe Poukine, Sauve qui peut, June 4, 2025, 98 minutes.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Voir-Alexe-Poukine-Sauve-qui-peut
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