'American Doctor' Documentary Exposes Gaza Hospital Devastation And Ethical Dilemmas

Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon who has responded to disasters and conflicts across roughly 30 countries, says nothing prepared him for what he saw under Israeli bombardment in Gaza. 'Just our first week in Gaza was worse than all of my experiences combined,' he told AFP, recalling deployments that included the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

The scenes Perlmutter and his colleagues encountered in Gaza hospitals form the core of American Doctor, a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and opens in select US theaters this Friday. Director Poh Si Teng, making her feature debut, follows three American physicians as they treat patients amid extreme scarcity and violence.

The Film And Its Subjects

The film centers on three US doctors from diverse backgrounds: Mark Perlmutter (Jewish), emergency physician Thaer Ahmad (a Muslim of Palestinian descent) and Feroze Sidhwa (the son of Zoroastrian parents). Teng deliberately avoids debating the political causes of the conflict, instead focusing on bedside medicine, human loss and the moral choices faced by clinicians and journalists.

Hitting Hospitals

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, killed 1,221 people. Israel's subsequent military campaign has resulted in a much larger death toll in Gaza: more than 73,300 deaths, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, a figure the United Nations has said it regards as reliable. Israel has acknowledged striking medical facilities, saying it targeted fighters allegedly using tunnels beneath some hospitals; the three doctors in the film report they found no evidence of such tunnels in the hospitals where they worked.

One of the film's most harrowing sequences documents what is known as a 'double-tap' strike: missiles hitting first responders treating casualties after an initial bombing at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. The footage and testimony are presented with the voices of clinicians who witnessed the aftermath firsthand.

Ethical Choices In Filmmaking

Teng struggled with how much to show on screen. 'You show too much, and it's gratuitous, and nobody's gonna watch, and you want to be effective in telling the truth. You show too little, and it's not real,' she told AFP. When she hesitated about including a photograph of dead children, Perlmutter argued that Americans need to see the consequences of weapons funded in part by US tax dollars: 'You're not dignifying them unless you let their memory, their bodies tell the story of this trauma.'

Calls For Action And Obstacles

The doctors express frustration that urgent appeals for humanitarian relief are too often met with questions about context rather than with concerted efforts to stop civilian suffering. 'If I tell you that there are kids starving... your response should be: "We have to stop this,"' Thaer Ahmad says in the film.

Teng also encountered funding resistance from donors reluctant to support a project documenting damage attributed to munitions supplied with US backing. Still, both the director and the film's subjects express cautious optimism that the film can shift public attention. 'The avalanche of truth starts with snowflakes,' Perlmutter says. 'I'm optimistic that we're all snowflakes in that snowball that's getting bigger and bigger.'

Reporting: AFP. Film: American Doctor, directed by Poh Si Teng. Premiere: Sundance Film Festival.