Humanity Under Siege, Healers Included

Iran and other pressing issues and Trump-era tragedies may have seized the news cycle spotlight of late. However, the humanitarian atrocity of the siege on Gaza still demands our attention. Breaking news info and sound bites are one thing; the longer, broader view afforded through documentaries can provide an important service by filling the reportage gap, and American Doctor suits that task.

In the intrepid director Poh Si Teng’s incisive and involving doc, the story of Israel’s often cruel and immoral war on Gaza is told through the eyes and the firsthand experience of three doctors from the U.S. Teng, who earned an Oscar nomination for her 2019 short doc St. Louis Superman, found herself outraged by the war. To make American Doctor, she quit her job at ABC, spent her own money, and crowd-sourced additional funding; she and a small crew embedded themselves in dangerous Gazan quarters to make the film. 

Coming from different backgrounds and backstories, all three — Jewish-American orthopedic surgeon Mark Perlmutter, Palestinian-American emergency room physician Thaer Ahmad, and Feroze Sidhwa, of Pakistani heritage — have seen and treated the tragic victims of a brutal war and have been driven to advocate for governmental and public awareness. 

The film is both information-rich and unflinching, thankfully sparing details while showing the real results of war. Much of the war zone action takes place in and around the embattled Nassar hospital, notoriously bombed in 2025, killing 22 Palestinians, some of them healthcare workers. Other sobering statistics underscore the story, including the fact that children were 600 times more likely to be killed in this war than in Ukraine, and the fact that, between 2023 and 2025, more than 1,700 healthcare workers were killed by Israelis.

In a telling and stage-setting scene early in the doc, Perlmutter is observing director Teng’s editing choices in progress. She is opting to go easy on the explicit injury footage, saying that she “wants to protect their dignity.” Perlmutter snaps back, “Israel took away their dignity. Their bodies tell the story of this tragedy, this genocide…. You pixelate this, and that’s journalistic malpractice.”

All of the doctors are passionate and articulate in their views, as heard in interviews with news outlets and public forums, and Perlmutter is particularly outspoken and well-spoken. Later in the film, speaking at a Healthcare Workers Advocacy group, preparing to take their case to government leaders in Washington, D.C., “if we don’t bear witness and treat the genocide as a disease and go for the cause of that disease, then we’re committing medical malpractice, because genocide has to be considered a medical diagnosis. It can no longer be considered political entity. It’s just that the disease happens to be a political ideology and it has to be eliminated.”

At another point, Perlmutter also reasons, “it’s perfectly okay to despise a government’s administration but love the country. You can still love Israel and hate the right-wing fascist government that runs it, praying for its change. When you stop grabbing the land that people have lived on for millennia, at gunpoint, the children stop dying.” 

Scenes of the actual Nasser hospital bombing, in 2025, lend a necessary, gritty reality to the story. After a second-story surgical ward was bombed, reputedly aimed at killing an accused terrorist in a hospital bed there but with collateral damage attached, Dr. Sidhwa rails against the “barbarity” of the attack. “You don’t bomb a hospital,” he says, “no matter what. That’s not how it works.” During that attack, a 15-year-old kid who Sidhwa had been healed of a previous bombing and was ready for release is “incinerated” by this new bomb. 

The film is not easy to watch or reflect upon, but it seems a necessary viewing. 

Here is yet another fine and watch-worthy documentary brought to a Santa Barbara big screen through the auspices of the McHurley Film Center’s dedicated documentary theater space. American Doctor is a compelling chronicle of recent history bleeding into the present, and a human tragedy which deserves to be exposed and explored. 

Its advocacy points are persuasive, and its POV is on the ground and, when necessary, in the operating room. But the real subject is flesh and blood and the barbarity of this particular conflagration.

American Doctor is screening on Saturday, August 29, 57 p.m., at the SBIFF Film Center (916 State St.). A conversation with Teng will follow the screening. See the trailer here.