Film: The Physician (2013)

Dir: Philipp Stolzl
Cast: Tom Payne, Ben Kingsley
Running time: 135 mins
Cert: 15

Based on the best-selling novel by Noah Gordon's, this film tells the story of nine-year-old Robert Cole who has a gift of understanding illness which leads him from the familiar life of 11th-century London to small villages throughout England and finally to the medical school at Ispahan.

Roberts’s interaction with the dazzling surgery of a Jewish physician, trained by the legendary Persian physician Avicenna, inspires him to accept his gift and to commit his life to healing by studying at Avicenna's school. Despite the ban on Christian students, Robert goes there, disguising himself as a Jew to gain admission. The film is a tale of the quest for medical knowledge pursued in a violent world full of superstition and prejudice.

Introduced by Dr Péter Bokody, Lecturer in Art History at Plymouth University.

£6/£4.20/Friends free
www.plymouth.ac.uk/whats-on/film-the-physician-2013