1 month ago
EXCLUSIVE: Watermelon Pictures has acquired North American distribution authorities to American Doctor, nan award-winning documentary astir 3 U.S. physicians who volunteered to dainty grievously wounded Palestinian children successful Gaza.
Oscar nominee and Emmy victor Poh Si Teng (St. Louis Superman, Patrice: The Movie) directed nan film, which conscionable won nan Tom Rankin Audience Award astatine nan Full Frame show successful Durham, NC. It won nan assemblage grant and nan Michael Sullivan Frontline Award for Journalism astatine Salem Film Fest successful Massachusetts, and astatine nan Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival successful Greece, it won nan prestigious Amnesty International Award and nan Peter Wintonick Audience Award. At CPH:DOX successful Copenhagen, American Doctor earned an honorable mention successful nan HUMAN:RIGHTS AWARD category.
Watermelon Pictures, nan institution founded by brothers Badie and Hamza Ali, earned an Oscar information this twelvemonth for The Voice of Hind Rajab, directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, a movie group successful Gaza based connected nan existent communicative of a five-year-old Palestinian woman killed successful 2024 by invading Israeli forces. The physicians of American Doctor risked their lives to execute emergency surgeries connected children for illustration Hind Rajab who person been gravely injured successful shelling, bombing and different attacks by nan Israel Defense Forces.
The 3 salient physicians – Palestinian American Dr. Thaer Ahmad, Jewish American Dr. Mark Perlmutter, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa who is of Zoroastrian inheritance — are “friends who couldn’t beryllium much different but are bound by nan shared oath to prevention lives,” notes a synopsis. They are agreed successful their condemnation of Israel’s decimation of Gaza launched successful retaliation for nan October 7th Hamas panic onslaught connected Israel. UNICEF reports astatine slightest 50,000 Palestinian children person been killed aliases wounded successful Gaza since October 2023.
The documentary, “filmed successful unfolding, on-the-ground scenes,” follows nan physicians “from a Gazan infirmary nether siege, to nan halls of Congress. Together they conflict to support a committedness to their Palestinian colleagues and patients, to proceed nan struggle wherever it matters most: nan United States.”
“Poh Si Teng has created thing genuinely powerful,” commented Watermelon Pictures cofounder Hamza Ali. “American Doctor is simply a testament to her imagination and courageousness arsenic a filmmaker, and to nan value of nan communicative she has chosen to tell. We are honored to partner pinch Poh and bring this bonzer movie to audiences crossed North America.”
In a statement, Teng said, “It is an unthinkable grant to activity pinch Hamza Ali and nan full squad from Watermelon Pictures. They believed successful our movie while we were still making it, done specified a daunting journey, and that belief carried us. It intends nan world to maine and to everyone who gave truthful overmuch to this film. Together, we are going to bring nan connection of American Doctor home.”
The acquisition woody was negotiated by Watermelon Pictures’ Hamza Ali, pinch Poh Si Teng, laminitis of Tiny Boxer Films, shaper Kirstine Barfod, and executive shaper Simon Kilmurry. Cinetic Media handled home sales, while Autlook Filmsales is overseeing world sales, including astatine Marché Du Film successful Cannes.
American Doctor is simply a Tiny Boxer Films accumulation and is produced by Poh Si Teng, Oscar nominee Kirstine Barfod (The Cave) and Reem Haddad. The movie is edited by Christopher White and Oscar nominee Ema Ryan Yamazaki (Black Box Diaries, Instruments of a Beating Heart).
Co-producers are Mohammed Sawwaf and Kasper Lykke Schultz, pinch executive producers Simon Kilmurry, Hamza Ali, Glennon Doyle, Rasha Mansouri, Hassan Elmasry, Poh Si Teng, Rami Elghandour, Andreas Dalsgaard, Mehdi Hasan, Juan Pablo Raymond and Kiran Alvi. The original people is composed by Suad Bushnaq, and nan original opus “Astral Light” is composed and performed by Suvo Sur, featuring Poh Si Teng connected vocals.
At nan Sundance Film Festival, wherever American Doctor premiered, Teng and nan physicians came to Deadline’s Studio.
“American Doctor is for illustration The Pitt,” Teng told us. “The quality is it’s existent and it’s group successful Gaza.”
Dr. Perlmutter commented, “We’ve each been to aggregate wide casualty events passim nan world. Feroze has been successful Ukraine, we [Thaer and Perlmutter] person some been to Haiti. Our acquisition successful Gaza was collectively acold worse than each of those different experiences combined, moreover 9/11. We witnessed nan largest pediatric homicide successful our lifetimes, and that’s difficult to get over. The sheer measurement of nan pediatric carnage that we saw is indescribable.”
The doctors person been outspoken successful urging Americans to see really their taxation dollars person been utilized to money Israel’s subject operations. According to nan Watson School of International Affairs astatine Brown University, nan U.S. has provided much than $21 cardinal successful assistance to nan Israeli subject since October 7th, 2023.
“What we saw [in Gaza] was really conscionable a shocking level of killing, of maiming, of starvation, of demolition of nan healthcare system, of nan targeting of our ain colleagues, nan targeting of gestation itself, nan targeting of puerility itself,” Dr. Sidhwa told Deadline. “And we conscionable don’t deliberation that those are things that Americans want to beryllium subsidizing location else. I deliberation nan American group want to cognize what’s going connected truthful that they tin make a civilized choice.”
