An Emmy-Winning Journalist Emptied Her Savings to Direct a Gaza Documentary. The Title Says 'American Doctor.'

Poh Si Teng had an executive job at ABC News, an Emmy on her shelf, and a list of bylines from the New York Times, Al Jazeera, and the Associated Press. She walked away from all of it — and emptied her savings account — to make her first film as a director, a documentary called American Doctor about healthcare workers in Gaza (Variety).

The title carries no mention of Palestine or Gaza. That was deliberate. Teng decided that including either word in the title would turn people away before they ever sat down to watch (Variety).

The film follows three American doctors who volunteered in Gaza: Dr. Mark Perlmutter, who is Jewish; Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a Zoroastrian surgeon; and Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who is Palestinian American. Variety's review, published during the Sundance Film Festival in January 2026, described the documentary as framing the war through the perspective of those three physicians, questioning whose voices and whose lives matter (Variety).

The seed for the project was planted when Teng came across an emotional video of Perlmutter talking about politicians not pushing for a ceasefire because of their ties to lobby groups. She began building the film from there (Variety).

A personal loss deepened her resolve. Teng's colleague Samer Abu Daqqa was killed by an Israeli drone strike while on assignment in December 2023 (Variety).

Teng's credentials run deep in documentary. She earned her first Emmy in 2025 as an executive producer of Patrice: The Movie, a Hulu production, in the Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking category (San Francisco State University News). She also produced St. Louis Superman, which was nominated for an Academy Award. She graduated from San Francisco State University in 2007 (SFSU News). The film's official site describes her as an Oscar-nominated and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker (americandoctorfilm.com).

American Doctor premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier in 2026 (Variety). It is a U.S.–State of Palestine–Malaysia–Qatar co-production, directed and produced by Teng (Variety). It went on to an international premiere at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, where it received a Special Mention in competition (Variety). The film was also among the first ten titles announced for the 2026 El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt (Variety).

Watermelon Pictures, a Palestinian-owned distribution company, boarded the film as its U.S. distributor in April (Variety). The company previously released The Encampments and From Ground Zero. Hamza Ali, a co-founder of Watermelon Pictures, serves as an executive producer on American Doctor (Variety).

What stands out is the scale of the bet. A decorated journalist with a network executive post and a stable production track record chose to self-finance a first feature on one of the most contested subjects in global media — and titled it so that nothing on the marquee tells you what it is about. The film's festival run suggests audiences are finding it anyway.