Watermelon Pictures, the North American distributor of the documentary American Doctor, has condemned the reported killing of Palestinian surgeon Dr. Rizk Abu Shaaira, who was featured in the film, in a strike on a Gaza hospital on Wednesday.
"We are horrified and heartbroken by the killing of Dr. Rizk Abu Shaaira. This is yet another devastating example of the continued violence against Gaza's medical community. Hospitals are places of healing, not targets of war. We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms and call for accountability and an end to the destruction of Gaza's healthcare system," Hamza Ali, co-founder of Watermelon Pictures, said in a statement.
Directed by Poh Si Teng, American Doctor premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The documentary follows three physicians, Dr. Thaer Ahmad, Dr. Mark Perlmutter and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, as they perform surgeries at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Gaza, during the war with Israel, risking their own lives to save others.
Reuters and other news services reported on the Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza. Alongside the death of Dr. Abu Shaaira, the bombing left Dr. Mohammed Odainy, another Palestinian surgeon featured in the documentary, with severe injuries. Both doctors worked at Nasser Medical Complex, treating patients amid wartime hardship and atrocities.
In his Sundance review, Hollywood Reporter film critic Jordan Mintzer wrote that what makes American Doctor stand out is how it "eschews the bigger picture to focus primarily on the practical, and often hard-to-watch, reality of surgeons trying to save lives in the operating room." When children are brought into the emergency room after surviving a bombing, he added, "their suffering is unbearable to witness no matter what side of the Israel-Palestinian conflict you find yourself on."
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from California who appears in American Doctor and worked alongside Dr. Abu Shaaira, said performing surgeries with colleagues in a war zone produces close and memorable partnerships.
"Dr. Rizk Abu Shaaira and I performed a complex surgery on a man with shrapnel injuries, while Dr. Mohammed Odainy and I operated on a teenager after an American-made bomb tore a hole in his abdominal aorta. Remarkably, the child lived," Dr. Sidhwa said in his own statement. "These two men were my friends, colleagues and an inspiration. Now Dr. Rizk is dead and Dr. Mohammed is fighting for his life. It was an unforgivable crime."
