Hot Docs 2026: American Doctor Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Since the inception of the Palestinian genocide in 2023, multiple documentaries have approached the massacre of Gazans through different lenses. American-Malaysian director Poh Si Teng, a former NYC journalist, left the city and followed the stories of three physicians volunteering in Gaza. The result is American Doctor, a documentary that follows Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish orthopedic surgeon, Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian emergency medic, and Feroze Sidhwa, a Zoroastrian trauma surgeon, and their efforts to enter the West Bank and work out of two hospitals tending to wounded Palestinians.

At first, the film offers up a more profound look at the bureaucratic aspect of their journey, rather than focusing on the action in the emergency rooms. Despite their efforts leaving the United States and having to fly to Jordan or Egypt, they faced plenty of opposition from an Israeli government that prevented them from helping in those hospitals. This proved to be mor of an issue for Thaer, a man whose Palestinian roots mad it that much more difficult to enter the territory. In what was not the easiest of journeys, audiences accompany the growing despair of the physicians, whose central objective is saving lives on the front lines of the war, especially infant ones. Still, throughout Mark’s journey, his perspective, as a white male jew, gave his words even more weight as he verbalizes the absurdity of Israeli violence towards healthcare workers, responsible for more than 1.700 deaths since the Genocide began, and the American funding of said violence.

Consequently, despite the sparseness, when the camera enters the hospital space, it does not shy away as it documents the bleakness of the genocide. One of the most brutal scenes of the film featurres an eleven-year-old child getting an operation on their left thigh and left arm, which have no pulse, serves as yet another example of the cruelty at the hands of Israeli forces inflicted towards children. Director Poh Si Teng balances the inaction by Israel’s government to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and the unwillingness of American diplomatic institutions to weigh in. Most importantly, with American Doctor, she immortalizes the brutality of the Genocide. Quoting Thaer’s statement, Teng delivers scenes that will haunt audiences in the future, even if the imagery isn’t quite enough to stop terrorizing us in the present.

still courtesy of Hot Docs

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Pedro Lima

Brazilian film writer. He is also a producer and executive producer for Zariah Filmes. Member of the International Film Society Critics Association (IFSCA), International Documentary Association (IDA), and Gotham and Media Film Institute.