Gaza-Focused ‘American Doctor’ Screens at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen

A sense of outrage compelled Oscar-nominated producer Poh Si Teng to create his first, hit series. American doctornow being tested at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen.

“I was very angry and I lost hope,” he explained in his speech at the CPH:Conference on Tuesday. “I didn’t know what to do with those feelings.”

His emotions arose from the tragic loss of life in Gaza under Israeli bombardment, attacks and blockades after Israel’s terrorist attack on October 7. Tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens – men, women, and children – have been killed since October 2023. According to one figure cited by the UN, more than 250 journalists have been killed in Gaza during that time, some of whom Teng knew from his time as commissioner. of the Al Jazeera English documentary.

“In a year of dealing with genocide, it was very difficult to see people I respected in journalism and Al Jazeera being targeted and killed,” said moderator Thom Powers, a podcaster, author, and documentary producer at TIFF. Teng expressed dismay at what could be called a collective consensus regarding the high death toll of journalists, photographers and others trying to cover Gaza. “I was a reporter for the New York Times, I worked for the Associated Press, I worked for ABC News, and I didn’t see that kind of unity where journalists always come together when someone is taken by the Russian government. [for instance]what’s going on here?”

Infuriated by the excessive bloodshed in Gaza, he set out to make a dramatic career pivot.

“I just felt like whatever I was doing at that time, it didn’t make sense anymore,” she said. “I needed to find something else.”

His sense of duty was strengthened after Teng attended a lecture by Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a North Carolina orthopedic surgeon who had volunteered his time in Gaza to try to save the lives of children badly injured by Israeli weapons. The doctor had become an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, declaring it a massacre. He addressed the conflict not from an ivory tower or a pundit’s chair, but as a doctor holding the broken bodies of Palestinian children in his hands.

Teng’s subsequent meeting with Dr. Perlmutter put him on a course American doctorwhich focuses on three US doctors who volunteer in Gaza – each from different backgrounds. Apart from Dr. Perlmutter, who is Jewish, two other characters Dr. Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian American physician from Chicago, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from California with roots in Pakistan’s Parsi minority who follow the Zoroastrian religious tradition.

Teng said that when he started the documentary project, he was told, “‘You can’t make it. It won’t happen … it won’t happen'” because of the title. “And I was like, ‘We’ll see…’ I get a real thrill when someone tells me it’s not going to happen.”

Not that it was easy. On the contrary. He used his savings of $150,000 to finance the project (Teng speaking to his young daughter, who attended the CPH:DOX lecture, telling her, “This is all the money I have saved for you, my child, my child, but maybe one day you will understand why.”). He convinced his filmmaking partners to lower their usual paychecks, a group that includes Oscar-nominated producer Kirstine Barfod (A cave), and Oscar-nominated editor and filmmaker Ema Ryan Yamazaki (Black Box Diaries, Instruments of the Beating Heart).

Six months into filming, in mid-2024, Teng’s funds ran out. “I was just overwhelmed,” he recalled. But the Malaysians of Teng’s origin stood up.

“My friend from Malaysia, he said, ‘Look, I don’t know what it’s like in the United States but come back home. I did two homecoming trips to Malaysia… in the summer and in the fall, and we raised about $200,000, donations, cash.”

At that time, Teng said, he got a changing view of the war in Gaza back in the US “At that time, the US society had changed and the grants were made available to us. In the first half of 2025, all the doors were closed, but … the institutions were made only by the people and the people have changed.

American doctor premiered in the US Documentary Competition at Sundance. Prior to CPH:DOX, it screened at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece and True/False in Columbia, MO.

“True/False was our biggest audience.” Midwest, United States, Missouri—Missouri Theater, 1,200. [seats],” Teng recounted.” And it was full, it was full.

In this film, Dr. Perlmutter encourages the medical community to view homicide as a public health problem, not just a vague political term. Respected doctors condemn the killing of innocent Palestinians morally and criticize the US for its role in the conflict as the main sponsor of the Israeli military. That was a revelation for some in the audience, Teng said, citing the reaction to True/False.

“When [the screening] it ended, people said, ‘We didn’t know.’ I think people don’t really know the extent of what the US is doing,” answered Teng. True, maybe, but what is our role? What is our role as taxpayers of the United States? What is our role as citizens of Western countries that support or make normal relations with a country, with Israel, that has this army that kills many people and exterminates people? So it’s simple. I would urge everyone to look at themselves in the mirror and what is their ability and what they know, who do they have, and what what they can do at this time, then do something rather than point fingers. And so that’s why we do it American doctor… I just thought there was a lot of blood on our hands.”

American doctor screens again at CPH:DOX on Thursday and Friday and will continue with the festival series going forward. Watermelon Pictures is among the film’s backers, but distribution plans have not been decided.