Michelle Yeoh trained with real surgeons for The Surgeon Movies Counter

In the weeks leading up to their fall film festival premiere, most directors are racing against time to finish final editing or reach into their higher powers. However, in the run-up to the Toronto Film Festival, Roshan Sethi – the filmmaker – was behind it surgeonone of TIFF’s best-selling titles starring Michelle Yeoh — was in the hospital.

Don’t worry. Sethi is in good health. For about two months of each year, Sethi is on call at General Brigham’s Mass in Boston. In addition to his participation in the creation of the Fox medical series Resident He has directed three feature films and is a radiation oncologist. (When Sethi was talking one mid-August evening about his new film, he had to stop mid-interview to take a call from the hospital, a first for this reporter.) “I decided to do it in the weeks leading up to TIFF because I felt like there wasn’t a lot going on,” Sethi says, distinguishing himself from every other independent filmmaker on the planet.

It was only a year ago, at the end of 2025, that Sethi was writing surgeon In the hours before the start of his 8 a.m. shift at the hospital. Although he often spends his free hours writing during his residency, the director no longer does his creative work during the weeks he returns to the medical field. “I’m too old for that now,” he says with a laugh. But he was fascinated by the idea of an action film centered around a highly skilled surgeon, and completed the script in just 10 days.

The film follows a newly retired surgeon who, while struggling to adjust to her life outside the operating room, is kidnapped and forced to perform surgery on a mysterious patient, and must use her medical knowledge to find a way to escape.

Without spoiling the more disturbing moments which will surely please a packed house at the Royal Alexandra Theater for the film’s September 12 premiere, scalpels and clamps are used instead of fists and guns, and tendons, pelvis, lungs, intestines and nasal cavities are on full display. “I’m afraid I’ll ever bore anyone,” Sethi admits.

In contrast to the massacre I witnessed surgeonand other Sethi features, including production by the Duplass brothers 7 days And star Jonathan Groff Cute Indian boyit was all a big-hearted comedy. But his personal viewing habits lean toward thrillers and action films, and his longtime hero is Michael Crichton, a Harvard Medical School graduate turned writer who has parlayed his scientific background into franchises like Jurassic Park and He is.

So, with little filmmaking experience, Sethi decided to write a screenplay that would play to his strengths, which, in this case, meant tapping into an understanding of gross (really crude) anatomy that far exceeds that of the average DGA member.

Fortunately, after box office success Crazy rich asiansAcademy Award for Best Actress Everything everywhere at once and evil Yeoh says she was in the market for “a different kind of action movie. It’s a fun movie, not a thriller, but it’s still bad.” Easier said than done. “I’ve done my fair share of physical combat — (movies) where I’m either a spy or a detective or someone who’s very skilled at martial arts,” Yeoh says of a career that has included the likes of “I’ve done my fair share of physical combat — (movies) where I’m either a spy or a detective or someone who’s very skilled at martial arts.” Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon And enter James Bond Tomorrow never dies.

Yeoh has long been speaking with Basil Iwanyk, the producer behind the film John Wick Franchise, about working together. After reading the script halfway through, she recalls expressing her frustration to Iwanyk: “I said, ‘Come on, Basil. You did this! You did that!’

Soon after, Sethi surgeon She landed on Thunder’s path and eventually with Yoh. “You’re constantly (asking), ‘How do I surprise my audience?'” says Yeoh, who was in Prague to shoot the film Blade Runner TV series when the project came her way. “When I read the script, I said to myself: ‘This is it!’”

For Sethi, Yeoh was the perfect leader. “She has the demeanor of a doctor. She’s in complete control of her body,” he says of the actress, who spent her childhood training as a ballet dancer. “A surgeon is very much like a military commander. (Operating rooms) often have a stricter hierarchy than any other part of the hospital, and they have to be firm and resolute people.”

Roshan Sethi and Michelle Yeoh

Kate Wong

In the lead-up to filming in Dublin, Yeoh committed herself to portraying the surgeon authentically, attending in-person teaching at the Royal College of Surgeons. “Everyone was looking at her and saying, ‘Why is Michelle Yeoh in this autopsy?’” Sethi recalls. “But she was walking around like nothing had happened.” The on-set doctor, Dr. Dara O’Keefe, consulted the actress on everything from how high her elbows should be when she makes an incision to where to place her fingers, while Sethi’s twin brother, the same surgeon, Dr. Rush Sethi, sent Yeoh video guides on how to hold the scalpels.

While a genre film starring an Oscar-winning global star is the perfect material for any studio’s slate, the filmmakers never pitched the script to studios, instead opting to produce the film independently in order to “preserve its authenticity” and “unusual approach to the business,” says the director.

surgeon It includes enough action sequences and complex medical prosthetics to excite even the most experienced independent producers, and was filmed in just 26 days. Sethi and Yeoh were often content to do one take for most shots. “Despite what I’m sure are my many faults, I’m never slow,” says Sethi.

Although it never hinders the workflow, surgeonn takes the time to explain the anatomy and science behind what the audience is witnessing. “The fact that it could be real is part of what makes it fun to watch. You feel like you’re being exposed to something you never knew you had before,” says the director. Reducing the audience’s suspension of disbelief is also the reason why Sethi wanted to include the word ‘MD’ at the end of his name in the credits, which required some lobbying with the Directors Guild. “The man I spoke to (at the Directorate General of Antiquities) told me he was in charge of all the executives,” Sethi recalls. “And I was like, ‘Has this been brought up before?’ (Sethi was not given an answer.)

One particular point of pride for Sethi is a scene involving her dangling anus. He first glimpsed the condition on his first day as a medical student, and says that since then he has “always wanted to put it into something.”

with surgeonthe director finally fulfilled his dream of bringing a wayward sphincter to the big screen. You have been warned.