Watermelon Pictures got off to a buzzy start last weekend at the Angelika in New York City with American Doctor, Poh Si Teng’s documentary feature about three U.S. physicians who volunteered to treat grievously wounded Palestinian children in Gaza.
Watermelon reported a cume of $41.1k at the Angelika. The film expands this week, and Watermelon is offering healthcare professionals complimentary tickets to two screenings in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Doctors, nurses, physician assistants, EMTs, and medical students can apply to see the film for free via Watermelon’s registration form. The Los Angeles screening takes place on Sunday at 1 pm and the Chicago screening is next Wednesday at 6:30 pm.
American Doctor won the Tom Rankin Audience Award at the Full Frame festival in Durham, NC, and the audience award and the Michael Sullivan Frontline Award for Journalism at Salem Film Fest in Massachusetts. The film also picked up honors at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece and CPH: DOX in Copenhagen.
The physicians profiled in the doc risked their lives to perform emergency surgeries on children who had been gravely injured in shelling, bombing, and other attacks by the Israel Defense Forces.
The film is a Tiny Boxer Films production and is produced by Poh Si Teng, Oscar nominee Kirstine Barfod (The Cave), and Reem Haddad. The film 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, with 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 score is composed by Suad Bushnaq, and the original song “Astral Light” is composed and performed by Suvo Sur, featuring Poh Si Teng on vocals.
At the Sundance Film Festival, where American Doctor premiered, Teng and the physicians came to Deadline’s Studio. You can see that interview here.
