Here are masked men who steal your heart. They are surgeons who signed up to work the trauma cases our tax dollars have created in Gaza. Award-winning filmmaker Poh Si Teng and her crew risked their lives to film these heroes, an American Jew and an American Zoroastrian, working side by side with Palestinians at the Nasser Medical Complex in war-torn Gaza.
Israel does not allow every doctor sponsored by the World Health Organization and MedGlobal into Gaza to practice life-saving surgeries. One of the three, Palestinian-American Thaer Ahmad, is frustratingly refused entry. But Teng follows him anyway, to show what he does to compensate.
All three docs want America to know the truth about where their tax dollars are going. The American Jewish surgeon from North Carolina, Mark Perlmutter, explains that many of the cases coming into the hospital are children, not to be mistaken for potential combatants, who were sniper-shot in the head. He remarks that this is not a strategy for protecting Israel; this is genocide.
Do you remember hearing on news broadcasts that the Israelis targeted the hospitals because Hamas was living in tunnels built under them? Dr. Sidhwa sets that record straight. He reports that not only are there no tunnels under the Nasser Medical Complex, the bombing there has targeted the outside patient stairwells and surgery recovery rooms. As a matter of fact, as he speaks, one bomb hits the release room, incinerating one of his patients, in recovery, who was waiting to leave.
Teng’s crew is in the room as they operate on a little girl, trying to save her life while amputating three limbs. Their anesthetic is spare so when she starts to wake early, they struggle to get her warm immediately.
Once a doctor is sponsored by the World Health Organization and MedGlobal, the doctor uses his/her own expenses to travel to Gaza. There is no payment or financial exchange. Perlmutter and Sidhwa also donated and transported hundreds of pounds of their own medical gear, surgical implants, and supplies.
Dr. Perlmutter took a break from his practice as Director of Hand & Wrist Surgery at Carolina Regional Orthopaedics to stay in Gaza for a total mission duration of two to three weeks, splitting his time during that deployment between the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa’s mission at Nasser Hospital ran from March 3 through April 1, 2025. This followed an earlier, separate two-week deployment he completed at the European Gaza Hospital in 2024. Because volunteer humanitarian teams are rotated out collectively, his entire medical relief mission, with Perlmutter, lasted roughly 14 to 21 days before their team was evacuated. Upon returning to the US, he resumed his clinical role working as a general, trauma, and surgical critical care surgeon at San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp/Stockton, California.
As Dr. Thaer Ahmad was repeatedly denied a repeat entry by the Israeli government to cross into Gaza, Teng’s crew followed his pivot to political advocacy. He teamed up with fellow physicians to brief U.S. lawmakers, sharing his firsthand experiences and calling for restrictions on weapons sales and an end to the humanitarian aid blockade. Upon returning to his family in Chicago, Dr. Ahmad resumed his job as an emergency medicine physician on the South Side of Chicago.
Poh Si Teng, born and raised in Penang, Malaysia, grew up living above her father’s motorcycle spare-parts shop. She traveled to the US as an international student, graduating with a major in journalism from San Francisco State University. After that she worked for the New York Times, Al Jazeera and ABC News Studios/Disney, eventually becoming an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and producer. She has remarked that she created “American Doctor” a verité documentary film, from “heavy emotional despair and a desire to bear witness to the crisis in Gaza.”
Teng completely self-funded the film, spending her entire life savings. The documentary made its world premiere in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired for theatrical release by Watermelon Pictures.
Poh’s masked men, superhero surgeons of uncommon courage, not only worked to save lives in Gaza but to tell the truth to everyone in America.
Rating: 10/10
Credits
Director: Poh Si Teng
Producers: Kirstine Barfod, Reem Haddad, and Poh Si Teng
Co-Producers: Mohammed Sawwaf and Kasper Lykke Schultz
Executive Producers: Simon Kilmurry, Hamza Ali, Poh Si Teng, Rasha Mansouri, Kiran Alvi, hassan Elmasry, Rami Elghandour, Andreas Dalsgaard, Mehdi Hasan, Juan Pablo Raymond, Glennon Doyle and Ghazi Shami
Featuring: Thaer Ahmad, Mark Perlmutter, and Feroze Sidhwa
Production Company: Tiny Boxer Films
Directors of Photography: Ibrahim Al Otla and Chris Renteria
Cinematorgraphers: Arther Nazaryan, Poh Si Teng and Ramzy Haddad
Editor: Christopher White and Ema Ryan Yamazaki
Music: Suad Bushnaq
Sound: Kristian Selin Eidness Anderson, Patrick Svaneberg Vejen and Jacob Langkjaer Davidsen
Websites: https://americandoctorfilm.com/ and https://www.autlookfilms.com/films/american-doctor
Trailer: https://americandoctorfilm.com/trailer
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