Actor Michelle Yeoh returns to action filmmaking in The Surgeon, a thriller from director Roshan Sethi that premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival. Yeoh plays a newly retired surgeon who is kidnapped and forced to perform an operation on a mystery patient, using her medical expertise rather than combat skills to try to escape. The film marks a deliberate departure for Yeoh, who wanted something that felt fresh after years of martial arts and spy roles, and for Sethi, whose earlier films were comedies rather than genre thrillers.

Sethi, who is also a practising radiation oncologist at Boston's Mass General Brigham, drew on his medical background to write the screenplay in just ten days, incorporating graphic surgical detail involving tendons, lungs and other anatomy in place of typical action violence. The project, produced by John Wick producer Basil Iwanyk's Thunder Road, came to Yeoh while she was filming the Blade Runner television series in Prague, and she trained with real surgeons to prepare for the role. The Surgeon premieres at the Royal Alexandra Theatre on 12 September.