Interviews with the media were surely not what Dr. Feroze Sidhwa thought he was signing up for when he took the Hippocratic Oath would be among his responsibilities and yet in “American Doctor,” he finds himself on a call with an Israeli news and commentary show where he is asked about what he witnessed during his time in Gaza, pressed in particular on the architecture of a hospital he worked in where the Israeli Defense Forces claimed there were underground tunnels. He assures his interlocutor that there were not, only to watch the interview as it was broadcast where a video used as proof by the IDF wasn’t real footage of the building, but rather a CG rendering that’s visual nature asserted a certain level of validity. The gambit worked well enough for the interviewer to bring it up as the premise of a question, but the flimsy nature of it is quickly dismantled by Dr. Sidhwa when he was actually there.
“American Doctor” spends less time in an operating room than you’d think, if for no other reason than for physicians Dr. Sidhwa, Dr. Thaer Ahmad and Dr. Mark Perlmutter even to reach Gaza in the first place to provide humanitarian aid is nearly impossible due to bureaucratic red tape, but it does surgically disabuse Western audiences of a predominant narrative of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that has largely privileged the former. To follow the U.S.-based doctors proves to be a Trojan horse to see the conditions of hospitals and the destruction of essential infrastructure from a very different point of view than has been presented in the mainstream.
It’s savvy of director Poh Si Teng to start the film with a scene acknowledging her own potential complicity in this when operating out of an abundance of caution as so many well-intentioned filmmakers and journalists have in her position, when talking to Mark about a picture of children’s corpses that she’d prefer not to show out of “respect for their dignity,” yet as he notes to not present such an image is to contribute to the narrative that’s already out there. A brief glimpse of the uncensored photo is enough for Teng to make the point and largely refrain from getting that graphic again and instead, soberly observes how so much in Gaza has been made so much more difficult than it needs to be for medical treatment and strongly suggests hospitals have been targeted for bombing to cripple the country.
Only Dr. Perlmutter and Dr. Sidhwa actually make it to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis after all three make the trip to Jordan with plans to cross over, but Thaer has to return home to Chicago after being denied entry the night before by Israeli authorities, being the only one of the three of Palestinian descent though he was born in the States and has already been on a few tours of duty. Still, he offers a good representation of the work that all three end up doing, seemingly spending as much time sharing their experience of Gaza to the outside world at conferences and news hits to keep attention on the region when they expect it to save as many lives as they can manage with their own hands, which sadly aren’t many when plenty of the patients that arrive are mortally wounded already. Dr. Sidhwa and Dr. Perlmutter have braced themselves for such tragedy, stoically working through one devastating case after another, often involving children, and have prepared in other ways, packing their own bags with as much hidden antibiotics and equipment they can to make up for what they know the hospital will not have. Yet if anyone’s to know what it’s like to put a bandage on a severe wound, it’s them and as much as they see it on the job, they feel it even more considering the larger picture where the U.S. is actively contributing to the weapons being used to bomb Gaza.
Teng is fortunate to find a trio of doctors with distinctly different personalities from one another, making how each grapple with the demands of their job and the increasing advocacy that’s increasingly a part of it a fascinating part of the film. The director, working with editors Christopher White and Ema Ryan Yamazaki, also are wise to pull back after a dramatic opening in Gaza to spend time with the doctors in America in advance of Dr. Perlmutter and Dr. Sidhwa’s latest tour of duty when the diminishing interest at a government level of providing any relief can be emboldening or deflating their desire to put themselves back into action. “American Doctor” is told with the urgency that the humanitarian crisis requires and for all the destruction it depicts, it builds an undeniable portrait of a systematic elimination of an entire culture.
“American Doctor” will screen again at Sundance in Park City on January 29th at 8:45 pm at the Library Center Theatre and January 31st at 5:30 pm at the Megaplex Redstone. It will also be available virtually on the Sundance online platform from January 29th through February 1st.