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 U.S. 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.
