
Phages: The Virus that Cures
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA are outpacing the drugs meant to kill them, and this film follows scientists and patients turning to a century-old alternative: bacteriophages, viruses that hunt and destroy specific bacterial strains. Interviews with researchers explain how phage therapy was developed in the Soviet Union and former Republic of Georgia decades before Western medicine took it seriously, and how institutes there kept treating patients with phage cocktails while the West chased antibiotics instead. The film tracks doctors and lab scientists working to bring phage treatment back into mainstream use as multidrug-resistant infections spread through hospitals, along with patients whose infections stopped responding to any conventional drug. Archival material and present-day lab footage lay out the biology plainly: how a phage recognizes its target bacterium, attaches, and replicates until the cell bursts. The case the film builds is practical rather than sensational, framing phages as a treatment option running out of time to be ignored.