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When Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist Poh Si Teng heard the news of her colleague Samer Abu Daqqa being killed by an Israeli drone strike while on assignment back in December 2023, something in her broke.
“When it’s your peer, it affects you in a very deep way. And then of course I was living in New York, being in all these circles because I worked in all these places — pin drop silence from journalists, from people I respected,” Teng says. “I couldn’t continue as I was.”
Shortly after, Teng quit her executive job at ABC News and emptied out her savings account with the goal of making a film about Gaza. But as somebody from outside the Palestinian community, she had no idea where to start. Nearly a year later, the ideas for “American Doctor” began flowing when she came across an emotional video of Jewish doctor Mark Perlmutter talking about politicians not working toward a ceasefire because of their ties to lobby groups.
After meeting Perlmutter and two other doctors, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a Zoroastrian surgeon, and Dr. Thaer Ahmad (who is Palestinian American), the genesis for her directorial debut “American Doctor” was born. Shot on the ground in Gaza, the searing documentary cuts between these three doctors working to save wounded children at a hospital while speaking out in the U.S. about the atrocities and bombings they witness.
“I was thinking, ‘If I do a film about journalists, I don’t know whether it will land. Maybe it’s too inside baseball,'” Teng recalls, adding that she decided not to include Palestine or Gaza in the title because it would turn people away. “As a former executive for a studio, we watch how people watch things, and it was not lost on me how American audiences love medical dramas.”
The opening scene sets up a core ethical question that journalists covering war and genocide have to ask themselves when it comes to showing uncensored images of children and babies. In the footage, Teng and Perlmutter get into a tense debate about the ethics.
“You can’t see my face because the camera is shooting at Mark and I’m crying, I’m deeply embarrassed. And I felt really guilty,” Teng says, who ultimately decides to include the brutal image of children in the film. “It’s such a delicate balance — you show too much, it’s gratuitous. You show too little, it’s not real. In terms of finding out what that could be, I am so glad that Mark yelled at me and set the tone at the very beginning of our production.”
Hamza Ali, co-founder of Watermelon Pictures and executive producer on “American Doctor,” recalls watching that scene for the first time over a Zoom call when Teng was looking for financing.
“It was extremely powerful, I was immediately like, ‘This is a whole different approach,'” Ali says. “To be honest, it was early on in the genocide and I was trying to have this call, meanwhile watching this emotional, compelling footage, so I was sold immediately.”
Teng pulled on her experience working as a cameraperson and producer for the Associated Press, as well as working as a reporter for the New York Times and Al Jazeera Media. She quips about her credit as an additional cinematographer: “That’s when you know a filmmaker is also broke when you see her credits everywhere!”
Another pivotal moment in the film’s journey was its Sundance premiere earlier this year. The conversations that the screening started showed Teng that people are becoming more perceptive to watching stories from Palestine.
Watermelon Pictures, the Palestinian-owned distribution company that released “The Encampments” and “From Ground Zero,” boarded “American Doctor” in April as U.S. distributor. While Teng ended up with other distribution offers in the months following Sundance, working with Watermelon Pictures was a “no brainer.”
“You have to remember who was there when nobody wanted to come near the film,” she says.
When watching the film at Sundance, Ali admits that he was “surprised” by the comedic relief and the community Teng captures between fellow doctors and patients: “It’s needed. You see this very human element of the doctors.”
When Watermelon came on board, the goal was to release the film as soon as possible to shine a light on healthcare workers being targeted in Gaza, especially with the upcoming U.S. midterm elections.
“The other goal of the film is to really get the medical NGOs to be more vocal. There’s been too many doctors and healthcare workers that are actually getting doxed for speaking out and facing repercussions,” Ali says. “This is a humanitarian catastrophe and we feel like this is a place where medical NGOs should be taking more of a firm stance.”
Both Teng and Ali describe the film as a collective “Trojan Horse approach” to get people to watch a film from the Palestinian perspective. And to honor healthcare workers, they are providing free screenings to doctors, nurses and medical students in Los Angeles and Chicago.
“I think a lot of the public perception is, ‘It’s over there, it’s Gaza. It’s the West Bank,'” Teng says. “No, it’s connected to us.”
“American Doctor” is currently playing in limited theaters.
