Poh Si Teng: American Doctor
Let me give you an impression of the beginning of the film: Reportage images of an ambulance that has stopped at a hospital, victims of bombing are being brought into the hospital, people standing outside with their mobile phone cameras. Cut to a doctor in America, Perlmutter, we will know his name and story later, he sits with his computer and wants to show a photo, he took, to the female filmmaker Poh Si Teng. Her reaction is “I will blur them to protect their dignity”. The doctor reacts strongly, “I have the families permission to show the photo”, it is Israel that took away the dignity of the dead children. Through the genocide they perform. It is my and your responsibility to tell the truth. The director films the photo without blurring and we see the dead children on a row. In between the two other protagonists are introduced briefly and there are CNN clips with people that question, what they are doing and showing. And in between there are images of rubble landscapes that look like Berlin 1945…
Perfect start of a film that is well made, shifting from the hospital, where the doctors (literally) operate, to their homes in America. You get total sympathy for the doctors, and for the way they collaborate with the local staff. You understand how important it is to have a good atmosphere when you deal with death and consequences of a war.
I quote the informational text from the CPH:DOX catalogue:
“When three American doctors – Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian – enter Gaza to save lives, they find themselves caught between medicine and politics, risking everything to expose the truth.
Three doctors with vastly different backgrounds and personalities meet in this intense story about the war in Gaza. The three doctors are united by their common desire to help and save lives. American-Pakistani Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is balanced and strategic, in contrast to American-Jewish Dr. Mark Perlmutter, who wears his heart on his sleeve and gets carried away during a live TV interview in which the two are participating.
The third party is American-Palestinian Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who, with his strategic understanding of the media, enters the debate about Gaza, but makes the medical profession and the need for help his message. In a race against time, impossible circumstances and their own homeland, director Poh Si Teng follows the three doctors’ struggles at a hospital in Gaza to save as many lives as possible. A struggle that also confronts the United States’ own role in the ongoing war that threatens the lives and future of the Palestinian people.”
United States, Palestine, Malaysia & Denmark, 90 mins.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️❤️
