Parky At the Pictures (17/7/2026)

(Reviews of Life Support; Synthetic Sincerity; and A Year in London)

LIFE SUPPORT.

Since debuting with The Olympic Side of London (2012), Italian-born, London-based documentarist Daniele Rugo has explored violence and social change in Lebanon in About a War (co-directed Abi Weaver, 2019) and the grim reality of 100 mass graves left behind by the civil war in The Soil and the Sea (2023). Now, he turns his attention to Gaza in Life Support, a collection of testimonies from 11 volunteer medics working in the war zone that Rugo was not permitted to enter himself because of the Israeli ban on independent observers and foreign media that has been in place since October 2023.

One of the most densely populated places on Earth, Gaza has been under Israeli siege since 2001. Footage from 2022 shows life going on as normal in the 40x12km strip. Since 2023, however, the territory has been under incessant attack and the doctors interviewed here use their video diaries and eyewitness accounts to alert the wider world to what has been hidden from its gaze.

British gastrointestinal surgeon Professor Nick Maynard has been volunteering in the Palestinian Territories for several years and he is always struck by the beautiful spirit of the people. Jordanian-American intensive care paediatrician Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan recalls the dehumanising process of entering Gaza at the Israeli checkpoints, while British plastic surgeon Dr Victoria Rose reminds viewers that this is anything but a backwater, as it has several universities and excellent hospitals to go with the people's zest for life. But the situation changed after the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which prompted an Israeli declaration of war.

Maynard was part of the first volunteer group in December, along with A&E doctor James Smith and obstetrician Dr Deborah Harrington, who reflect on the amount of destruction across Southern Gaza that they saw after entering Rafah from Egypt. Harrington recalls the flimsy shelters people had constructed against the winter cold, while general surgeon Khaled Dawas remembers the incessant bombardment once night fell, with Smith saying he lost count of the individual explosions after several hundred.

Rose tells how she took 23 yellow suitcases full of plastic surgery kit donated by British and Irish colleagues and was lucky enough to get them all into Gaza. But she filmed the aid trucks that had been denied entry and the line stretched for miles. She was based at the Gaza European Hospital, which was so full of displaced persons that she felt it was like a concentration camp, with little blanketed niches containing families on corridors and staircases. Haj-Hassan has similar memories of the smallish al-Aqsa Hospital being overcrowded and under-equippred, but she had to make the most of what was available. In a video post, she expresses her dismay at the number of elderly people and children she was seeing in the middle of what she called `a war on civilians'.

Dawas, Smith, Harrington, and Maynard were also at al-Aqsa and they describe the chaos of tending to patients on the floor, while also trying not to upset the resident staff by appearing to be saviours. Rose explains the vital need for plastic surgeons and is delighted to hook up with Irish-Palestinian colleague Ahmed El Mokhallalati, while Haj-Hassan notes that the force of the bombs means that a lot of kids receive internal injuries that are often untreatable. She highlights the lack of space and equipment, while Smith (who has been in other crisis zones) admits he has never seen injuries as serious as the ones he has witnessed in Gaza. Dawas reveals that many people died after surviving successful surgery because there was no after care or antibiotics. British paediatric orthopedic surgeon, Ana Jeelani, also reports on shortages of clean instruments, gauze, and bandages, while Haj-Hassan remembers how the flow of new casualties was never-ending because the bombing never stopped. She felt things couldn't possibly get worse, but they did.

In April 2024, Gaza's largest medical centre, as-Shifa, was virtually destroyed by Israeli bombardment. We see footage of the destruction, as 381 bodies are exhumed from several mass graves, but the staff kept trying to provide services in restricted spaces. Maynard recalls a surgeon leaving theatre on being told his sister had just been killed, while another was so hungry that he had to stop periodically to sit down and put his head between his legs to keep himself going. Jeelani describes the privilege of being the vessel to get such suffering and small acts of heroism out to the world to provide hope and the reassurance that the Palestinian people have not been forgotten when it seems to them as though they have.

Having reached a hotel in Cairo at the end of her two-week mission, Rose speaks to camera about her guilt at being able to return to her comfortable life and her fears at what she will find if she's permitted to return because she knows that Gaza is being pitilessly targeted and its people are trapped. Maynard recalls leaving from his second tour on 7 May 2024, when Rafah was levelled by the Israelis and he was part of the last group to leave. This cut off the foreign aid supply, while thousands were displaced after the shelling of residential areas. It also meant entry routes were now all in Israeli hands and Rose shows how her packing had been limited to one suitcase, with there being no guarantee that she would be allowed to take her operating instruments into Gaza. She chronicled her journey to the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis with orthopaedic surgeon Dr Graeme Groom in August 2024.

On arriving through a ghost town, Rose is shocked by the state of certain parts of the hospital site, while Jeelani makes a voice note about the stress being endured by the local medical staff `living through this genocide', as they are treating horrific injuries on an hourly basis without rest. Harrington has nothing but admiration for the durability and compassion of her colleagues, including one widowed mother of two teenage daughters, who brings them to work because she wants them to die together if anything happens. Yet, she keeps working on the wards, while writing a protocol for how to deliver neo-natal care under fire.

On 26 November, Haj-Hassan addresses the United Nations to tell them about Israel's systematic targeting of healthcare workers using the triple strike method of bombing places once the emergency services have arrived. She calls this one of many red lines that should never have been crossed. Plastic surgeon Dr Tom Potokar films the aftermath of an attack on the hospital in which he is working and both Rose and Maynard decry the targeting of vital community infrastructure on the specious claims that Hamas is being sheltered in mosques, schools, and hospitals. Maynard accuses governments of parroting Israeli lies and swears to have seen no sign of Hamas presence in the hospitals in which he has had free access.

Haj-Hassan describes how Israeli forces drove medical staff out of the al-Nasr children's hospital in Gaza City to use it as a base. When they returned, they found decomposing bodies in the infant beds because they had been left to die. Another hospital had its motherboard destroyed to prevent life-saving equipment from being used, while the Turkish Friendship cancer hospital has been appropriated, leaving 11,000 patients without care. This was demolished in March 2025. As Rose and Groom lament the passing of a promising student in a rocket attack, Haj-Hassan declares Israel's strategy to be `a genocidal frenzy'.

On 2 March 2025, the borders were closed completely. Palliative care physician Dr Mhoira Leng claims that the denial of pain relief for cancer patients to be tantamount to torture, while Maynard points to the fact so many are suffering from malnutrition, which hampers their recovery from trauma surgery. He reveals that formula feed is being confiscated at the border and he calls such cruelty `unconscionable', as they are starving children and lowering their chances of recovery. Haj-Hassan explains how food deprivation has lasting effects on young bodies and she is appalled that nothing is being done to challenge the Israeli campaign to cause suffering. Harrington and Rose also testify to the impact of malnutrition on the body and a sense of well-being, with Rose hearing colleagues claim they would rather die than try to struggle on.

In May 2025, Israel approved a new aid distribution programme through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Rose gives a press conference calling for the UN to be allowed to continue its aid relief, as there are now 42,000 orphans in Gaza and basic supplies are still not getting through. Moreover, GHF relief points have been targeted by the Israelis and 2000 Palestinians have been killed while collecting handouts. Maynard noticed cluster patterns in the casualties, as though IDF troops were choosing targets for the day in a sadistic game of shooting practice. He denounces the UK government for not challenging Israel on its genocidal behaviour. Leng points out that the dehumanising aspect of destroying vital buildings is a pre-requisite for genocide and Haj-Hassan concurs that the Israelis are targeting the future, even to the point of bombing an IVF clinic in order to detroy its supply of embyros.

She and Maynard don't know how the Palestinian medical staff keep going, as each short trip they make wipes them out physically and emotionally. He calls them heroes, but that's not how they see themselves. As Haj-Hassan tells the UN, the attack on Gaza is deliberate and inhumane and her words are crosscut with Rose giving a video report on treating two young girls for severe blast injuries, while colleagues next door were battling to save their mother. The hospital has just been placed on the edge of Israel's active battle zone and, as a result, staff living in tented camps within the zone have been told to stop working and evacuate their families. Everything is calculated, Haj-Hassan concludes, to causing danger and distress and nothing is being done to reprimand Israel or rein it in.

Choosing their words carefully, Maynard and Rose insist Israel is committing war crimes in a campaign of eradication that can only be called genocide or ethnic cleansing. Rose even accuses the Israeli government of turning Gaza into Auschwitz in its push for land and domination.

Leng and Dawas echo their concerns, as attempts are made to limit births and starve children to prevent there being a next generation, while relief supply points are targeted as refugees seek somewhere to go after being forcibly driven out of their homes.

On 16 September 2025, former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, delivers the results of a UN inquiry and declares a genocide in Gaza. Rose calls for it to stop, while Maynard and Jeelani accuse the British government of being too cowardly to act. Smith claims there is apathy towards the plight of the Palestinian people (although no one mentions how the counter claims of anti-Semitism made by Israel and its supporters play into an already complex situation). Maynard refers to Benjamin Netanyahu by name, but is equally outraged by other Western leaders who have failed to confront him and his country's war crimes.

Haj-Hasan wipes away tears at the UN, as she wonders why the most-streamed genocide in history has been met with silence rather than sanctions. She asks why eyewitnesses are discredited when foreign journalists are banned and blames the UN as much as component national governments. But the last word goes to a Palestinian, as Denise Gough reads a defiant passage from Alaa Alqaisi's 2025 essay, `Beneath the Howl of Hunger'. The film ends on a freeze-frame of happy children from just a handful of years ago. They're lives did come to a halt after 7 October and one is left to wonder whether all three kids in the shot have survived.

There's no much left to say here. The interviews are recorded against a neutral background so that the viewer is not distracted from the words of courageous medics, who have not only put themselves at risk to save lives in Gaza, but who have also stood up to be counted from the safety of the UK. Perhaps a little more field footage might have driven the points home harder, as Rugo has respected the dignity of the casualties by not presenting graphic images of their wounds. The words should be enough. Why would these people lie? But they will be ignored and this genocidal Nakba will be allowed to continue because it suits too many powerful men who have learnt nothing from history.

SYNTHETIC SINCERITY.

The poster for Marc Isaacs's latest film depicts a conversation between the Lumière brothers. Louis says, 1You know, Auguste, sincerity is the key to documentary cinema,' to which his sibling replies, ` Yes, Louis, and if we can fake that, we've got it made.' It's a witty way to tease the content of a documentary fiction that complete the trilogy started with The Filmmaker's House (2021) and This Blessed Plot (2023). Running just 72 minutes, Synthetic Sincerity is as likely to frustrate as it is to fascinate, with its tricksy approach to fact and fiction. But few other British directors can currently match Isaacs when it comes to innovation and ingenuity.

Ingmar Bergman once claimed that `Film begins with the human face,' and Marc Isaacs uses paintings and photographs to show how images of the human face have been democratised by the invention of the camera. Now, with Artificial Intelligence, new faces can be created and Isaacs, unnerved by the reality of looking into the eyes of people who have never existed, sets out to discover how these fake faces are created. Having asked Uyghur restaurant owner, Ablikim Rahman, to present a range of expressions for his camera, Isaacs heads to the University of Southern England at the invitation of an avatar based on Romanian actress, Ilinca Manolache.

He meets computer scientist, Professor Yi-Zhe Song, the head of the Synthetic Sincerity Lab, `where data learns to be human'. Along with assistant, Lynn El-Safah, Song seeks to demonstrate to some of his grad students how AI avatars lack vital human characteristics by showing them clips from such past Isaac documentaries as

All White in Barking (2008), Calais: The Last Border (2003), Lift (2001), Men of the City (2010), Outside the Court (2009), and The Road: A Story of Life and Death (2013).

Isaacs interviews Song, who hopes that AI can be democratised so that people can control it with confidence. But he wants to warn them that AI can think better than they can and that dictators lurk beneath the surface who want something in return for being useful. After the interview, Song has the avatar ask Isaacs to licence his films to the SS Lab, so that it can study the facial features of his characters. They also want him to document the process and he starts by filming Dawn Raison and Pinaki Chowdury as they watch clips to map expressions and gestures to help build up `a corpus of inscribed humanity'. Lynn explains that they are particularly interested in clips in which the characters don't speak so they can contrast `the sincerity of silence with the articulacy of speech'.

A fan of Robert Bresson, Lynn used to be a film-maker and she joins Isaacs to record Ablikim Rahman's face and body language, so that they have a new subject to work on. Meanwhile, Pinaki is intrigued by Kate, a blonde shoplifter filmed in Outside the Court and his observations about seeing a different side of her the more he watches prompts Isaacs to reassess his relationship with her and he wishes in voiceover that the has managed to have a nice life since they met outside Highbury Magistrates' Court.

A petrochemical engineer in China, Ablikim is now a chef and Lynn calculates that he had made the Silk Road in noodles during his career. She has a try, as she likes to cook, but he remains wary when Isaacs asks about his exile and Song notices from the footage that he is very good at concealing his emotions. When Isaacs interviews Dawn in her study (filled with pinball machines), she is reluctant to discuss her life and this contrasts with a character Isaacs filmed who fraudulently claimed to have been a foundling and an Iraqi War veteran. The project had been scrapped when the truth emerged, but Isaacs still finds him intriguing because he wants to know the reality that prompted him to fabricate a past.

When Isaacs asks Song about his experience of coming to the UK at 16 and falling in love at 20, the avatar ticks him off for not respecting boundaries and tells him to stick to the SS/AI topic. Nevertheless, he goes to supper with Lynn in her apartment and she tells him about her 82 year-old grandmother refusing to leave Beirut because she wouldn't have the same grocer. She admits to not having a home and simply following the money to remain independent. She hooks up with her family in Qatar and facetimes with Isaacs to tell him that her grandmother was driven out by an Israeli earthquake bomb. Lynn introduces him to her younger sister and the avatar remonstrates with him again for getting involved in private lives.

Having admitted she is a little jealous because she doesn't have a backstory to share, the avatar suggests that Isaacs prepares himself for the big presentation in front of the university provost (Richard Isles). What he sees is an avatar of Ablikim Rahman that utilises the facial and postural data collected by the SS team to give him a chance to say things about his experiences that he would not divulge himself. However, the provost is furious that they have chosen a Uyghur subject, as the university has lots of students from China. Lynn is called to a disciplinary hearing with the provost and the avatar and she is warned that her visa might be withdrawn if the case goes against her.

When Isaacs is editing footage of Lynn pulling up her collar while walking along a grey Embankment, the avatar suggests this is a sentimental image. He tells her to butt out and criticises her for speaking against Lynn in the hearing with the provost. But the avatar says she has no moral basis, as she only types what people want her to say. She accuses him of being equally dependent upon screenwriter Adam Ganz, and we see them sitting together trying to find a way to pad out the slended running time. They plump for a montage of faces accompanied by a quote from Georg Simmel's essay, `The Aesthetic Significance of the Face', which they erroneously date as 1903. For a conclusion, everyone goes to Rahman's restaurant, where he introduces his wife and three children before serving up a banquet - while the avatar looks on from her computer screen with a hint of envy on her inexpressive face.

Proving that you don't need AI to make stuff up, Marc Isaacs winds up being more playful than profound in this scattershot treatise on the face and the future. There is no University of Southern England and, even though many of the Synthetic Sincerity unit are academics (some based at the University of Surrey, which provided the campus), it becomes harder to take the material seriously as a documentary. Isaacs has increasingly bent the rules in recent times and it doesn't really matter if the set-up is bogus. However, there's a more damaging shallowness to both the findings made by the team and Isaacs and Ganz's ponderings on a technological breakthrough whose pros and perils are still largely unknown. They also manage to skirt the knotty ethical issue of using real people as training data and the drawbacks of creating convincing content that can be passed off on the trustingly (or naively) unsuspecting as real. Did Lynn really go to Qatar or is Isaacs merely spinning us a line to keep the story moving in another unpredictable direction?

At one point, Isaacs tells the SS researchers that he sometimes feels that he steals images in the same way that Kelly shoplifted £3000-worth of swag on a good day. He explains that he is interested in people who have left their past behind and hopes that his films allow viewers to identify with the people they see on screen and empathise with their situations. Maybe that is why he is so keen for the Lab to focus on a Uyghur who feels unable to discuss what is happening to his community back in China. Or maybe he was simply warning of the unseen dangers linked to British institutions accepting investment from foreign donors?

Some will recognise Ilinca Manolache from Radu Jude's Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (2023). But her voice was ventriloquised by an unnamed Dutch woman, who neatly complements the accents of Lynn El-Safah, Ablikim Rahman, Yi-Zhe Song, and Pinaki Chowdury. The songs similarly reinforce the cosmopolitan nature of the project, with the knockout duo of Majida El Roumi's `Koul Chi Aam Yekhlass' (1988) and Fairuz's `Konna Netlaka' (1975) playing over Lynn's more poignant moments. They also impart a sense of sincerity, which is perhaps Isaacs's main theme amidst the convolutions and contrivances and the self-conscious self-reflexity, as humankind needs to keep its wits about it, lest it forgets that it is bound by much than that which divides it. Maybe he should team up with the equally maverick Josh Appignanesi, as they would most certainly bring the best out of each other and really give audiences something worth talking about.

A YEAR IN LONDON.

Following a clutch of shorts, including Insideout (2012), Bee Dee Dee (2014), Arrivederci Rosa (2015), The Power of One Coin (2018), and Crazy Bitch Blues (2020), Flaminia Graziadei makes her feature bow with A Year in London. A low-budget indie romance, this is genial fare, but it never comes close to capturing the milieux in which it's set.

The daughter of an Italian tailor who hopes she will take over his business, Olivia Romano (Nina Pons) leaves behind boyfriend Paolo (Matteo Bassi) to take up a place at the London Academy of Couture” in South Kensington. Shocked by the sight of two besuited men kissing on the street and appalled by the mess made by housemates Greta (Clementina Aliberti) and Jodi (Shaun Ramos), Olivia goes straight to sleep in her tiny room. But she's bowled over by her new college and immediately falls under the spell of maverick tutor, Nina Clarke (Melanie Liburd).

However, she makes a bad impression by spilling coffee in front of her in the canteen, while her bid to leave a flask of real Italian coffee on her lecture theatre desk backfires when the attached not drops off and Nina tosses the flask in the bin with a waspish reminder that she can't be bribed. She does, however, want to give them all the chance to find their voice as an artist and promises to work them hard.

She is preoccupied, however, by a pressing deadline for her next collection and by her insatiable desire for pretty girls in nightclubs. Newly broken up from a woman who wanted a relationship rather than fun, Nina invites Olivia, Greta (a jewellery specialist), and the ambitious

Suzy (Elisabetta Rizzo) to gallery viewing. As Nina is keen to escape a journalist, however, she and Olivia leave early with a bottle of champagne and two flute glasses. They sit in a dark alley to discuss Olivia's upbringing in her father's shop when they are mugged and the incident results in each having a sleepless night, as her masturbatory imagination runs riot.

Nina has strict rules about not getting involved with students, but she spends the day with Olivia after she feels wobbly in class. They walk and chat and shop and share dessert in the Italian restaurant where Olivia waits tables to pay her fees. Nina invites Olivia to come to Rome to be her assistant and agrees to travel by train because Olivia dislikes flying.

In the interim, Olivia designs a jacket to wear with a white shirt and a short black skirt and wows Jodi in class. She also helps Suzy persuade a woman in a wheelchair to be her runway model. Nina piles work on her ultra-camp assistant, Krish (Nagaieh Dad), who is thrilled she's back on form, as is her mum, Shenise (Sutara Gayle), who teases her daughter about clearly being in love. Back at the flat, they play beer pong, as Greta explains about moving around a lot as a kid from Croatia so that she had a life of goodbyes until she decided to be from nowhere and everywhere.

After a successful business supper, Nina fantasises about Olivia giving her a foot massage and decides it's best to have an early night. Olivia calls Paolo to tell him she wants to break things off. She tells Nina whe they explore her wardrobe during a lazy hotel morning that ends with Nina doing Olivia's make-up (so she looks like Amy Whitehouse). She says she could get used to this, but Nina reminds her she's a student before Olivia reminds her that term is almost over.

At a louche soirée with dancing waitresses, Nina has cause to remind Olivia to tone down the compliments. However, she has to leave when Paolo makes a scene at the door and drags her off to a restaurant. He tells her that father Andrea (Nando Irene) needs surgery on his heart and she feels guilty for not having phoned for so long. But she refuses to be emotionally blackmailed, as does Nina when Niccolò (Ralph Palka) offers her a money-spinning deal to quit teaching an design for him. She insists her students inspire her and he suspects they do so in more ways than one. Before returning to the hotel, Nina leaves Olivia a voicemail in which she hopes she understands why she keeps pushing her away. But she admits she hasn't felt this way since her first love (with an older woman who wanted to control her) and she wonders if there's a conversation to be had after Olivia graduates.

However, Paolo is waiting for her in the bar and tells her that Olivia has consented to marry him and Nina is so crushed that she goes to the room (without managing to see Olivia) and grabs her bag to head back to London. She bungles a reunion with Helen (Carlotta Morelli) before snubbing Olivia when she tries to speak with her in class. She also refuses to help her when she discovers she's a model down for her graduation show.

Suzy and Jodi take her to a gay club to chill out and she loses herself on the dance floor. Next day, however, Nina is unamused when Helen steps in for Olivia and she vamps it up in front her. Nina tells Olivia that they're done now she's no longer her student, but she gets news her father has fallen ill and she runs from the show in order to be with him.

While Shenise makes Nina fish soup, Giovanna (Karin Giegerich) disowns Olivia on hearing she is gay and she curls up on the bed cuddling a teddy wearing her jacket design. But they patch up when an earthquake hits the house and Olivia asks her mother to let her be herself. Meanwhile, Nina has found the letter tha Olivia wrote her in Rome in the suitcase she hadn't opened since she got back. She is about to decamp to the Eternal City to work for Niccolò. On hearing about the quake, he tells her love is more important than work and Nina drives through impossibly beautiful scenery to plead with her to give her another chance. They meet in the street as Olivia is taking a bin bag to the dumpster. After a few poetic words, they kiss as the camera circles them. Six months later, their new show is a success and Andrea and Giovanna beam with pride, as their lesbian daughter strides off confidently with her lover.

Despite the best efforts of Melanie Liburd, this sudsy saga never feels remotely true to life. Writing with Laura Swain, Flaminia Graziadei packs the action with unlikely situations and cardboard cut-outs. Nina Pons's resemblance to Anne Hathaway allows the pair to impart a Devil Wears Prada spin. But their script lurches between self-conscious set-pieces that are hampered by tin-eared dialogue and persistent implausibility. The biggest problem, however, is the character of Olivia, whose personality seems to change from scene to scene, as she goes from klutzy wallflower to assertive fashionista almost as randomly as she switches from ragazza candida to flirtatious femme. It's amazing what a mugging can do to someone.

Pons looks the part, but she struggles with the language and the nuances of Olivia's emotional rite of passage. Liburd is persuasively chic and imperious. But the sub-plot that she has lost the edge that made her a precocious superstar and has settled into teaching when not cruising queer clubs rings hollow. So do Nina's social whirl, her pursuit by a snooty journalist and a snarky vlogger, and her dealings with the eminence grise who talks her into leaving everything to come to Rome. She's also saddled with an outrageously caricatured assistant and a down-to-earth mum who would be corny in a soap opera or a sitcom. Mercifully, we're spared the visit to the community centre which Nina speaks of in the back of a taxi with misty eyes. Yet Liburd keeps the picture afloat and brings the best out of Pons when their hesitant gazes meet.

Pons also has some decent scenes with her housemates, but classmates like Suzy are as sketchily limned as Helen and even Paolo, who is nothing more than a useful plot complication. Why is he so determined to break up Olivia and Nina, when he sends her a postcard thanking her for freeing them both? Is he out for spiteful revenge or is he secretly gay and hoping for a lavender marriage to please his rich parents? And how convenient that his re-entry into Olivia's life coincides with a health emergency for the father she claims to dote upon, yet can't find the time to phone.

Speaking of phones, Olivia calls Paolo from Rome in the middle of the night, but he answers under a blue sky. Since when did Italy have time zones? Similarly, Nina has come to Rome with enough clothes to fill a wardrobe, yet she leaves with nothing more than a half-empty suitcase after Paolo tells her that Olivia is engaged. We don't see her waking to find Nina gone without an explanation, but she gets back to class in time to be given the cold shoulder in another of those lurches that undermine the story's integrity.

Francesco Ciccone contributes some chocolate boxy views of the Basilicata countryside, but his camera is rarely allowed out of doors in London. Given the setting, Alessandra Carta's costumes are somewhat unremarkable, but they sum up a film that feels like Graziadei's fanciful fotoromanzo vision of what things might be like rather than a snapshot of how they actually are. Nevertheless, we are all now fully aware that `There's so much waste in the supply chain.'