Semmelweis

Semmelweis (2023) is a Hungarian historical drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Lajos Koltai — one of European cinema's most celebrated cinematographers, known for his collaboration with István Szabó — tells the story of Ignác Semmelweis, the Hungarian doctor who worked out what was killing women in Vienna's maternity wards. Miklós Vecsei H. plays him.

The year is 1847. One ward of the Vienna General Hospital has a death rate several times higher than the one next door. Semmelweis counts the numbers, watches the routines and arrives at a conclusion: the medical students walk straight from the dissection room to the delivery room without washing their hands. He introduces a chlorinated lime rinse. The deaths drop sharply. The hospital moves to dismiss him.

Koltai frames this as tragedy rather than triumph — Semmelweis saw what no one wanted to see and paid for it. The tagline "He saw the invisible, he did the impossible" is accurate, but the film is more interested in what it cost him than in the heroics. Watch Semmelweis (2023) online on iFILM.