Distributor Condemns Reported Killing of Surgeon Featured in 'American Doctor'

Watermelon Pictures has condemned the reported killing of Palestinian surgeon Dr. Rizk Abu Shaaira in a strike on a hospital in Gaza, as The Hollywood Reporter reported on 12 November 2026.

Abu Shaaira was one of the doctors featured in American Doctor, a documentary directed by Poh Si Teng. The film premiered at Sundance, the US independent film festival, and follows surgeons working at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, in Gaza. Abu Shaaira worked at the same hospital as Dr. Mohammed Odainy, another Palestinian surgeon who appears in the film.

The strike that reportedly killed Abu Shaaira also severely injured Odainy, according to the same report. The film also follows Dr. Thaer Ahmad, Dr. Mark Perlmutter and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, the last of whom is a trauma surgeon based in California. Sidhwa worked alongside Abu Shaaira at Nasser.

Watermelon Pictures is the North American distributor of American Doctor. In North America, a distributor handles how a film is released to cinemas, television and streaming, and the company's co-founder is Hamza Ali. The company also runs Watermelon+, a streaming service that focuses on films and series from marginalised and underrepresented communities.

The film's subject, then, is now also the subject of a news report about his death. For viewers who saw the documentary, the surgeons on screen are no longer only people at work in a hospital. They are colleagues who lost one of their own.

Those decisions have not been announced.