Tiny Hearts

In overwhelmed hospitals and cities under siege, thousands of children are born each year with heart conditions that are entirely treatable but only if you can get to them. For most, geography is a death sentence. Dr. William Novick decided that was unacceptable. Tiny Hearts is a feature documentary following Dr. Novick, founder of the Global Cardiac Alliance, as he leads volunteer medical teams across active conflict zones to perform pediatric cardiac surgeries on children who would otherwise have no chance of survival. From Ukraine to Lebanon, Iraq to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Serbia, the film bears witness to the quiet, relentless work of saving lives the world has largely stopped paying attention to. But this is not simply a medical film. It is a portrait of conviction of what it costs to keep showing up when the stakes are life and death and the recognition is almost nonexistent. It is about the parents who carry their children across conflict lines for a chance at survival, the local doctors working in impossible conditions, and one American surgeon who, decades into a career that could have looked very different, still boards planes into war zones because the children are still there. Tiny Hearts asks a quiet but urgent question: In a world overwhelmed by its own crises, who decides which lives are worth saving and what does it cost the people who refuse to leave that question unanswered?