THE STORY – When three American doctors—Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian—enter Gaza to save lives, they find themselves caught between medicine and politics, risking everything to expose the truth.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Poh Si Teng (Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes
Since October 2023, more than 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza. This staggering statistic serves as the somber backdrop for Poh Si Teng’s “American Doctor,” a documentary that carries the weight of a moral emergency. The film has a simple, haunting mantra unifying its subjects: “I’m a human being. I’m a doctor.” In a world increasingly fractured by ideological silences, “American Doctor” investigates the professional and personal cost of refusing to look away.
The documentary follows three American physicians—Dr. Mark Perlmutter, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, and Dr. Thaer Ahmad—as they navigate the ruins of the Gazan medical system. Teng’s direction is notable for breaking the traditional documentary fourth wall, particularly in an early, poignant dialogue between her and Dr. Perlmutter. As he presents images of dead children, Teng expresses a hesitant instinct to blur the footage to preserve their dignity. Perlmutter’s response is sharp and corrective: it is the violence itself that stripped away their dignity; to obscure the truth of their suffering is to do the survivors a profound disservice. This commitment to unfiltered truth defines the film’s visual language. We see the harrowing reality of Khan Yunis: limbs shattered, brains exposed, and the distant, rhythmic sounds of gunfire that frame the doctors’ daily work. It is an evocative and difficult experience, watching these men perform surgeries in hospitals that have become targets rather than sanctuaries.
“American Doctor” finds its most intellectually compelling and intimately personal dimension in the story of Dr. Thaer Ahmad. A Palestinian-American emergency physician from Chicago, Ahmad navigates a unique and painful friction between his domestic life and his professional calling. In scenes at home with his wife and daughters, his desire to return to Gaza is framed not just as a mission, but also as a necessity to soothe the survivor’s guilt that shadows his every move. He speaks with a candid, vulnerable clarity about the dissolution of his own illusions—the hope that his American status or WHO affiliation might offer some vestige of safety in a landscape where healthcare workers have become targets. His Palestinian heritage, however, is a bureaucratic dead end. When the Israeli government rejects his entry, the film captures a profound sense of disappointment; his frustration is palpable, the quiet dejection of a man forced to watch from the sidelines while his skills are needed most.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a Pakistani-American trauma surgeon, approaches the crisis through a lens of civic responsibility. He speaks candidly about the burden of knowing his own tax dollars contributed to the destruction he is now trying to mend. Meanwhile, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina, offers a nuanced view of the ideological shift required to witness this conflict. Having grown up with a specific narrative regarding Gaza, his journey is one of profound education and subsequent isolation. He lost friends for his advocacy, yet remains resolute, framing the institutional silence of the medical community as a form of global medical malpractice.
If the film has a flaw, it is structural: it leans heavily on Zoom calls and news clips of the doctors arguing with skeptical journalists. While these moments are educational and illustrate the media’s skepticism toward medical truth-tellers, they pull the viewer away from the visceral, high-stakes footage in the field. However, the pace ramps up in later scenes, creating an atmosphere that feels like watching sand fall through an hourglass—where every grain represents a child’s life lost to the lack of basic medical supplies and Israeli bombings.
“American Doctor” poses a central, terrifying question: What does it mean for the future of our global community if we ignore the starvation and slaughter of a million children? By centering the narrative on those whose only mission is to save lives, Teng bypasses partisan noise to focus on a universal humanistic truth. This is not a film about sides, but about the resilience of the human spirit and the terrifying reality that even those dedicated to healing are not safe from the machinery of war. It is a compelling, necessary piece of cinema that demands we find our humanity before the hourglass runs out.
