What happens when one doctor refuses to accept blindness?
God of Sight is the feature documentary I’ve been building for years. It’s about Dr. Sanduk Ruit, a doctor from a remote village in Nepal who found a way to remove cataracts by hand in under ten minutes, and who set out with Fred Hollows and Geoff Tabin to end blindness that never needed to happen. It grew out of the same Musicbed treatment that became Second Sight. In December 2022 we went to Nepal to film Dr. Ruit, his team at Tilganga and an eye camp in Lumbini. It’s in development, and I’m directing and producing it.
God of Sight
A Healthcare Revolution
Dr. Ruit was born in a village in the Himalayas, where people went blind from cataracts and simply lived with it. He lost his sister to TB, and decided the system had to change. The surgery he and his team built, stitchless and done by hand, cost very little and matched the quality of anything in the West. For years the West wouldn’t listen. They kept going anyway, from village to village, and built a lens factory in Kathmandu.
We’ve filmed in Nepal, with Dr. Ruit, his team at Tilganga and an eye camp in Lumbini, and in Sydney, with the Hollows family. The film mixes those interviews and present-day vérité with a remarkable archive, including Michael Amendolia’s photographs from the camps. It’s a story about what people can do for each other, and it’s still being made.
A Think Less production
Directed and produced by Cole Sax
Photographs by Michael Amendolia
Archive courtesy of The Fred Hollows Foundation
Album photographs courtesy of Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology
Athletes featured in the series
Skateboarding, surfing and climbing enter the Olympics.
NextWorld
Debut
YouTube Originals · Feature documentary
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