What American Doctors Saw in Gaza
It’s been nearly three years into Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians, and still no step closer to its end. Since the latest “ceasefire” began in October 2025, Israel has continued to bombard Gaza and has killed more than 1,200 people, United Nations experts reported earlier this month. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more recently rejected President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace agreement with Hamas for Israeli troops to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
“The burden has really continued to devastate the healthcare system in general. So you’re hearing from colleagues every day. They don’t have the materials that they need to serve their patients,” Dr. Thaer Ahmad tells The Intercept Briefing. “They don’t have even the basic sort of guarantee that there is a cloak of security allowing them to operate in the traditional ways that they would like to.”
This week on the podcast, Intercept reporter Jonah Valdez speaks to Ahmad, an emergency medicine physician and humanitarian who has provided medical relief in conflict zones including Gaza, and director Poh Si Teng about their new documentary “American Doctor.” It follows three U.S. physicians from three different states who volunteer to enter Gaza to provide emergency medical care as best they can, with the insufficient supplies they have, to save lives — under the threat, as healthcare workers and hospitals have repeatedly been the target of strikes, of losing theirs.
The American doctors were not just targeted by the Israeli military, however. Upon returning home and trying to share the atrocities they had witnessed in Gaza, they were “pummeled,” says Teng, in interviews with mainstream media outlets and ignored by lawmakers in Congress.
“There’s this refusal to acknowledge what most American people are interested in — and that is money out of the Middle East in terms of military and wars, and into our communities here, into healthcare, and into some of the services that we are deprived of, that, for example, Israeli society is able to provide for their citizens: free education, free healthcare,” says Ahmad. “We don’t even have that here, and yet we’re still providing a significant amount of aid.”
Teng says, “For everybody who’s trying to do something in this moment, it’s not like as individuals we have no agency. We do. But it’s also important to remind people of the systems in place that make it very hard for us to do the right thing. If there was any path forward or a glimmer of inspiration, I felt, follow these doctors.”
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Transcript
Jonah Valdez: Welcome to the Intercept Briefing. I’m Jonah Valdez, a reporter at The Intercept who covers politics and foreign policy.
BBC: Breaking news. A senior Hamas official tells the BBC it has agreed to disarm in Gaza.
FOX 10: President Trump says he’s doing something long considered impossible: disarming Hamas, forging a stable peace, and beginning a withdrawal of Israeli forces.
JV: Let’s go back to July. President Donald Trump announces that his so-called Board of Peace has reached a deal with Hamas to disarm, a primary goal of the ceasefire agreement.
Donald Trump: Most people said that would be a deal that would be undoable.
JV: By August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the plan and the demand to withdraw troops from parts of Gaza.
It’s worth reminding Israel controls nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s territory.
PBS: President Trump’s Board of Peace says it’s in ongoing discussions with Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Mr. Trump’s new Gaza peace plan in yet another public break with the White House.
BBC: Saying it won’t withdraw from the territory until Hamas gives up all its weapons.
Benjamin Netanyahu, translated VO: Israel rejects the 15-point plan. The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed.
JV: It’s been nearly three years into Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians and still no step closer to its end. Since the latest ceasefire began in October 2025, Israel has continued to bombard Gaza and has killed more than 1,200 people, according to U.N. experts.
In all, since the start of the war in October 2023, at least 70,000 people have been killed in Gaza and 171,000 wounded. That doesn’t count the untold numbers buried under rubble. Still, the Israeli government has tight restrictions on who and what aid enters Gaza.
A new documentary called “American Doctor” follows three American physicians who travel to Gaza to provide medical care and save lives where healthcare workers and hospitals have been targeted.
When the three American doctors — Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian — enter Gaza, they find themselves caught between medicine and politics, risking everything to expose the truth.
[Clip from “American Doctor” plays]
Dr. Thaer Ahmad: I want to take you through what Gaza looks like when a hospital is totally overwhelmed.
Dr. Mark Perlmutter: As a Jewish physician, I knew nothing about Gaza. I thought everybody out here were nothing but terrorists.
Dr. Thaer Ahmad: We’re just asking that hospitals not be targeted.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa: This is a political problem. We need a political solution. We do not have to accept that as Americans.
Dr. Mark Perlmutter: This is what my tax dollars did, what your tax dollars did. They have the right to know the truth.
[Clip from film ends]
JV: I’m joined now by the folks behind “American Doctor.” Director Poh Si Teng is the producer of the Oscar-nominated “St. Louis Superman” and Emmy award-winning executive producer of “Patrice: The Movie.” “American Doctor” marks her debut as a feature documentary director. Poh, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
Poh Si Teng: Thank you for having me, Jonah.
JV: Also joining us is Dr. Thaer Ahmad, a board-certified emergency medicine physician and humanitarian who has provided medical relief in conflict zones including Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Kenya. He’s conducted five medical missions to Gaza, most recently in early 2024, and has since been denied entry four times by Israeli authorities due to his Palestinian heritage.
Thaer, welcome to the show.
Thaer Ahmad: Thank you, appreciate it.
JV: So in the opening scene of “American Doctor,” we see an ambulance and two severely injured children, bloody and in shock. They are carried into a hospital, and next we’re introduced to Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon sitting in front of his computer and speaking to the person filming him.
There’s this back and forth that happens between Dr. Perlmutter and you, Poh, of this debate of, should we blur the images? The image that they’re looking at and talking about is of six dead babies. Dr. Perlmutter goes on to say that Israel took away their dignity, and you’re not dignifying them unless you let their memory, their bodies tell the story of this trauma, of this genocide.
Poh, I’m wondering if you could talk about that scene, that conversation with you and Mark, and why you started the film there.
PT: Firstly, thank you, Jonah, for asking that question. I think as journalists, we often grapple with, what do we show? What do we write about? What do we capture?
You show too much, and it’s gratuitous — and people turn away. If we want to be effective, we want people to watch. But at the same time, if we show too little, then it’s not real. Then we’re not actually telling people what was happening.
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So this scene that you’re talking about, Jonah, which, actually we recorded it — it was my second day with Mark. And I remember him being really, really furious with me because I was trying to see, like, how much should we show?
Part of the conversation was like, “Maybe we should film this creatively. Maybe we should pixelate it.” And he was very mad at me — and understandably so. He’s like, “What is the point? Why are you here?” And so it made me think “Why am I here?” If the reason for me wanting to make this film is to be effective, then I need to do right by those who have passed on, and maybe it is to show. And so that pretty much, Jonah, set the tone for what the film was going to be.
“What is the point? Why are you here?”
JV: On that note, that early scene really signaled to me, and I’m assuming the audience, that this film is very aware of and cares deeply about who gets to tell these stories, who gets to shape the narrative from the Israeli and U.S. military, powerful media institutions involved. To me, aside from showing the actual events and atrocities, that layer of the film really drove it forward.
[Thaer], the film follows you and two other American doctors, Dr. Mark Perlmutter and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon, as you three decide to return to serve in Gaza during the short-lived 2025 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Remind us what the situation in Gaza was like at the time, and it’s worth mentioning that in March 2025, the death toll had already surpassed 50,000 people in Gaza, which at that point had been a little over a year into Israel’s genocidal campaign.
TA: It’s important for folks to remember that around this time, the Trump administration had brokered this sort of ceasefire deal, announced on the heels of the inauguration.
As we were slowly getting towards the end of that first phase of the ceasefire deal, which was March 2025, it had become abundantly clear that the Israeli military was getting ready to create another offensive. In fact, by the time I think the resumption of bombing had taken place, the Israeli military had already implemented a suffocating siege on the Gaza Strip.
The rise of malnutrition was so widespread that the Famine Early Warning System program that exists had already been sounding the alarm — that this is very concerning, that starvation was being used as a weapon of war, and this is all happening as the fighter jets were being fueled up and getting ready to carry out this offensive.
Many people who were involved in the emergency medical teams that were entering into the Gaza Strip at the time, they had really no inclination in terms of, would this be a resumption of the war on Gaza and the people of Palestine, or would we somehow get this miraculous 11th hour extension of the ceasefire deal?
Many of us — me, Feroze, and Mark — at the time, were planning on going back in March. We were traveling to Jordan, where every single doctor who is an international or nurse, that’s where they go. And they wait in Jordan to get approval by the Israeli military, and then they will cross in from Jericho and make their way towards Gaza.
We’re sitting there in Jordan, and we’re there with the film crew. Mark and Feroze get approval, and they’re able to enter. Then ultimately, I receive a denial. And that’s something that’s happening in the backdrop, not just of this film, but that’s happening consistently when it comes to access into the Gaza Strip.
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You are talking about everything from food, water, doctors, nurses, diesel fuel. All of these things are arbitrarily being denied and restricted, even people like myself who had been to Gaza many times since 2008. That was kind of the circumstances that we were facing: There was a “ceasefire,” and there was trucks maybe entering — but what was needed in the Gaza Strip was not being supplied. It was not happening on a scale that needed to happen. Once they started cutting that off and the Israelis implemented this siege, we started to see people really struggling.
JV: Poh, I know as we said at the top, this film marks your debut as a feature documentary director. Just wondering, were you able to travel with doctors to document their work in Gaza? If so, could you talk a bit about that experience?
PT: I knew very early on that it would be impossible for me to get into Gaza. Even though the Jewish doctor, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, he’s ever the eternal optimist. When we met early on, he’s like, “I’m going to train you as a scrub nurse and take you into Gaza.”
Now, we know who controls the borders into Palestine. And anybody doing a cursory search on my name, what are they going to find? Journalist for the New York Times, former commissioner for Al Jazeera English, and I’ve worked for The Associated Press. I was an executive for ABC Disney. It was never going to happen for me.
So fortunately, I have this incredible producer: Reem Haddad. Reem and I used to work at Al Jazeera English. She looked after MENA [Middle East and North Africa], that region. She was working at that time, this was I would say end of 2023, with this incredible Gazan team: our co-producer Mohammed Sawwaf, and our director of photography, Ibrahim Al-Otla. They had made this short doc at the end of 2023. And I was like, “Reem, can we work with this team? We are trying to film in Gaza.” That sort of marked how we got to film inside Nasser Medical Complex.
Honestly, this film is really to honor what they saw and what they are living through, not just what they are trying to document. So that’s how we were able to make this film.
I should also add: At the end of the day, too, this entire production, it spans teams, from our team, from eight different countries. Not one person, not one country could have made this happen. It took everybody coming together from different parts of the world who wanted to do something in regards to what was happening in Gaza.
JV: To your point, Israel has continued to block international journalists from entering Gaza up to this point. Palestinian journalists have been the eyes and ears documenting the war, as have doctors, like yourself Thaer, and medical workers and the both of you and those who were let in.
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I don’t know if you recall, but Thaer, you and I connected over text and voice notes in March of this year when I was writing about the Israeli government delaying doctors from leaving Gaza, which interrupts the entire process of care. And as you were explaining, that wasn’t the first time you were blocked from there. That was after the most recent ceasefire that was brokered in October of 2025.
From what you’re hearing from colleagues, how have things changed since when you were there during the first ceasefire? How are things the same?
TA: The burden has really continued to devastate the healthcare system in general. So you’re hearing from colleagues every day. They don’t have the materials that they need to serve their patients. They don’t have the space that they need. They don’t have even the basic sort of guarantee that there is a cloak of security allowing them to operate in the traditional ways that they would like to.
I would say that probably the biggest sign that the healthcare system has been attacked in such a devastating way would be the list of people who need to be evacuated out of Gaza to get medical treatment. That list is anywhere from 15 to 18,000 people, depending on what list you’re using. These are people who urgently need to leave Gaza because the medical care that they need is not able to be provided because of the siege and the blockade that continues to exist by the Israeli military.
We’re talking about kids with cancers that are completely treatable that will die from their cancer because they’re not allowed to go to an East Jerusalem hospital like Al-Makassed or Augusta Victoria, where that corridor had existed prior to October 7, but the Israelis are intentionally shutting down that corridor.
You’re talking about physicians who would want to perform basic procedures for their patients with heart disease or diabetes or whatever it is. They’re not able to do so because that material is actively being blocked by the Israeli military. They’re on the back of a truck somewhere, either in Egypt or Jordan, and not being allowed to enter.
These conditions continue to proliferate, and this is all happening, I should say, while the public services that should exist in any society, like water, sewage, electricity, even shelter, all of those things are not — to say “adequate” is not the right word, but I would say it’s absolutely horrifying in Gaza.
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We are talking about things like chickenpox breaking out in these camps. We’re talking about kids who continue to be malnourished. We’re talking about all of these different communicable diseases that run through these overcrowded shelters and tent cities. These continue to be the conditions that people are living in, despite the fake ceasefire that was announced that saw more than 1,200 Palestinians killed since October 9, 2025, when it was first announced.
I’m even worried about what happens next because, as you probably have seen, Netanyahu announced that he’s rejecting that sort of ceasefire or the agreement to move on to the next phase that was brokered by this Board of Peace. And so I anticipate that conditions will worsen.
When we think about so many of the people that we worked with, that will appear in the film, that are in the background of the film, or even actually the cinematographers that Poh mentioned — I just don’t feel that they have the things that they need to sustain life in their homes, in their tents. Things continue to deteriorate, and it’s fallen out of the news cycle.
JV: Thaer, there’s scenes in the film of you and your colleagues packing basic medical supplies like scrubs and rubber bands, and Mark even hides antibiotics in his luggage. The film does a really good job at just laying out that reality and this targeting of hospitals. It’s pretty wild to think that even the mere fact of targeting of hospitals was a point of contention among much of Western media at a certain point.
The film features quite a bit of footage from sit-down interviews between doctors featured in the film and broadcast media. There’s these subtle framing biases that I think, Poh, you highlighted really well.
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There’s that clip in the beginning where a CNN anchor caveats Dr. Perlmutter’s accounts of Israel targeting civilians as “extreme allegations” that CNN cannot independently verify. Later in the film, also on CNN, Dana Bash tees up a question to Thaer about getting aid into Gaza by saying, “Will Hamas allow the critical aid to get to the civilian population?” — completely ignoring the Israeli blockade on Gaza. There’s that sit-down where Mark grills the CNN anchor live on air about not doing enough coverage.
Poh, I want to start with you. Could you speak to this bias, this molding of the narrative that often benefits the Israeli government, and why that was important to show in the film?
PT: I’m so glad you asked this question. And I should say that long before I became a documentary filmmaker, I was a journalist. I’ve worked for so many of the established media organizations, and I’ve learned so much from my time there. But also, when the genocide started and there was pin-drop silence about the murder and execution of journalists, Gazan journalists, I’ll be honest with you: It hurt.
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What happened? Why is it when journalists are kidnapped, taken in Russia, or killed in Ukraine or different parts of the world, all of a sudden, our peers, we come together. Why was it so that Gazan journalists or journalists in the West Bank or even Lebanon, for that matter — people weren’t rallying together. What was happening?
The whole film, I should say is a vérité in-scene film, so you’re in the world of Dr. Thaer, Dr. Mark, and Dr. Feroze. But in these clips, when we were filming them as they were being interviewed by media, I really wanted to show what they were up against.
As a former documentary commissioner for Al Jazeera, seeing my colleagues get targeted and executed was very, very, very hard. Now, as we were making the film, seeing the doctors trying to save lives and speak up for life, and then seeing them get pummeled like that, like basically the weight and structure of media crushing them — I was upset.
“Seeing the doctors trying to save lives and speak up for life, and then seeing them get pummeled like that, like basically the weight and structure of media crushing them — I was upset.”
Of course, I’m filming, I’m just observing. But it was very important to have that in the film because there are individuals, regular people — Thaer, Feroze, Mark — just trying to do all they can. And then there’s the weight of structure.
For everybody who’s trying to do something in this moment, it’s not like as individuals we have no agency. We do.
But it’s also important to remind people of the systems in place that make it very hard for us to do the right thing. If there was any path forward or a glimmer of inspiration, I felt, follow these doctors.
[Break]
JV: Thaer, there’s another scene where you acknowledge that you, “Always get nervous when Mark talks during interviews,” because he really, you called it, gets into the weeds of things like Zionism, and you’re worried about essentially bad-faith critics making you, what you say is, guilty by association.
Could you say more about that, and how in this media framing, how a pro-peace, anti-genocide message can get twisted, and also how those critics may complicate that message even further because of your identity as Palestinian American?
TA: Yeah, I think that’s something that we all have grown up with in terms of the Palestinian community. It’s understanding there’s a degree of dehumanization that is pervasive in not just the media, but in art and literature.
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I remember being in medical school and having assigned reading before we started medical school, and then it was about a Hmong child who was dealing with a seizure disorder. And nestled in the middle of that book was a comment, a very brief passing comment, about a Palestinian who was a terrorist and was doing something extremely violent. Most med students in the country were assigned this reading. This is the backdrop of understanding this is how the world views you. Yes, of course, we reject it, but Palestinians know very well how they’re being portrayed and also what you’re stacked up against.
For me, I think something that I appreciate about Mark is that he understands there’s a privilege that he has, especially just how he looks, and that he can say things that I think can go farther than anything I could ever say. It can resonate with more Americans than anything I can ever do.
What I worry about, too, is the fact that you’ve got this conversation that the media and so many people try to make complicated. They want to say, “It’s complicated. There’s two sides.” Really what we’re trying to talk about is, “Hey, there’s an objective fact that something horrifying is unfolding here, and that really horrendous things are happening to this group of people by this institution. It’s a straight line. There’s not really, actually, so much dark and gray area here.”
The one thing I really wanted to make sure that we were communicating effectively — because again, so many people are working on this project, trying to get this film out there — I wanted to make sure that that message was as clear.
I would always worry knowing that Mark is somebody who shoots from the hip; he’s somebody that says what’s on his mind. Just in the back of my mind, just thinking about, every time we’re landing in Chicago O’Hare, every time you’re getting questioned by border control. All of these things were always at the top of mind for me. So it’s something I admire about Mark, but it’s also something that I know I just can’t do it myself. That’s not the world that we live in.
PT: To add to that, and one of the things I have so much respect for Thaer, because it takes a leader, to be really honest with you, to know whose word can go far because of the context and of our time and how things are.
As a woman, as a person of color, as somebody who’s barely 5 feet — I am acutely aware of when I step into the room as a journalist, as a filmmaker, perception. But I can only imagine what it’s like for a Palestinian; I will never be able to understand.
So those are one of the things where I thought about a lot in the making of the film. It was something that I was learning from as well, especially from Thaer, who, I don’t mean to embarrass you, Thaer, but, I really look up to you in many ways in how you are able to navigate this, because I feel like I’ve tried it in my entire — I’m 42 this year — and I’ve been challenged in navigating it.
“ It takes a leader, to be really honest with you, to know whose word can go far because of the context and of our time and how things are.”
Seeing you being able to do that and work with Feroze and Mark, even though you’re so different — and they’re very different doctors, very different personalities — it gives me a lot of inspiration on how to work with others who are also different, and also to know when does one take a step back and let others go forward.
JV: Thaer, did you have anything to add?
TA: Something that I’ve noticed for Palestinians, one of the things that really helps us get going, especially motivates us, is seeing other people step up and use their platforms and really put their money where their mouth is.
So despite me having real concerns that this project would be stifled, and it would never be able to see the light of day because of all of the things working against it, when you see Poh and Reem and you see all of the people that worked on this just continue to push and continue to say, “No, we’re going to be here from the beginning to the end. We’re not going to abandon you” — I think for my community here in the States that felt like we’ve been silenced for so long, and, even when anybody wants to talk about this subject, that you don’t even want to bring a Palestinian or invite a Palestinian because it could be [viewed as] biased, which is absurd.
You talk about who shapes the narrative — we are prevented from having control over our own narrative because of this disturbing narrative and structure that was built. When you see that and other people who are willing to put their money or their life on the line like Poh or Mark or Feroze — for me, it really gives you that energy when you just feel like everything is stacked up against you, and there’s a genocide unfolding. That’s a really heavy thing.
JV: I’m curious, Poh, how you initially contacted the subjects of the film there and others. How did that process unfold?
PT: So I’ll tell you how it began. I chanced upon Mark. I saw him being interviewed, and a reporter had asked him, this was fall of 2025, this was last year, and a reporter had asked him, “So Dr. Perlmutter, you have just returned from Gaza. Why do you think there’s no ceasefire?” Mark, who doesn’t mince words, straight up, he says, “There’s no ceasefire because politicians are (expletive) to lobby groups.” And I was like, “Oh my, who is this person? Who is this doctor?”
He was actually speaking in New York a few days later, and I went to meet him. Then very soon after he introduced me to Thaer and Feroze, and I just wanted to see how these three people, who couldn’t be more different in many ways, were able to work together.
JV: Thaer, you and your colleagues go to Washington to try and sway congressional members to act, and you all are met with indifference and platitudes, “dead ears,” as one person puts it.
But what do you make of the current political landscape in which we’re seeing U.S. support for Israel decline sharply even on the right, and where political candidates who have campaigned on and been proudly pro-Palestine are winning primaries?
TA: It’s just been incredible to see how the shift has emerged over the last two and a half years. You’re talking about early on, I remember November 2023, I had a Zoom call with eight senators. It was with the members, eight of them, all Democrats, and I remember saying that we need a ceasefire.
This was when Shifa Hospital had first been surrounded, and there were 38 babies in the neonatal intensive care unit in the newborn nursery, and several of them were in incubators. I remember being desperate at that time and saying, “We really need a ceasefire.” One of the senators, who was a member of the Armed Services Committee, cut me off and said, “Ceasefire is a military term. We’re not prepared to call for a ceasefire at this point. We’re more interested in maybe helping secure humanitarian aid.”
It went from that to when the images emerged for when the famine was in full-blown effect, where you had several members of Congress and the Senate sort of speak very publicly. They were outraged by what they saw, despite us telling them this information very early on, this is where we were heading, this is what was happening unless they did something. So to see the rhetoric even change has been remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like this before.
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Then to see progressive candidates who really explicitly say that our policy in Palestine has been an utter failure and has contributed to the development of a genocide, that’s been amazing to see how much traction that’s getting, how much money they’re able to raise, how these races have really flipped the establishment on its head.
But I will say there are a couple of things that concern me, which I think the timing of this film could not be more perfect. And that is, you’re still seeing the very core of whatever, I don’t even know what they’re moderate in, but like, these “moderates” on the Democratic side or on the Republican side, you still see them try to stick to the status quo and go back to the old ways.
There’s this refusal to acknowledge what most American people are interested in — and that is money out of the Middle East in terms of military and wars and into our communities here, into healthcare, and into some of the services that we are deprived of, that, for example, Israeli society is able to provide for their citizens: free education, free healthcare. We don’t even have that here, and yet we’re still providing a significant amount of aid.
You’re still seeing some people try to resist that, try to resist this natural popular movement that’s at play here. Again, which is why I hope that this film could be that vehicle for people to be able to continue to push and understand we need to be activated and we need to advocate.
So we’re continuing the fight, and we’re still trying to push this forward. But there’s still, even though the rhetoric has changed, the policy is still well ingrained and institutionalized in a really significant way that’s going to take a long time to reverse. So that’s something I would encourage people to think about.
Abdul won the primary. Awesome. He’s going to be up for a huge fight in Michigan for that Senate race. There’s going to be a lot of money poured in against him. Mayor Mamdani was elected, and you can see how he is put under such a microscope for every single position or statement or even whatever his wife does. All of that is under a microscope.
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There’s going to be this huge battle because it has been so ingrained in this country to support the Israeli occupation of Palestine as well as the Israeli military, but also to continue to fester and make the entire Middle East a very, I would say, a violent playground, for lack of a better term. That’s just how this country has faced things. That’s why the power of film, I hope, is something that can translate into action, and people can feel activated.
JV: There’s this thing that Dr. Feroze says at the end of the film where he is at that conference for Jewish Voice for Peace, and he expresses doubt that any of his mainstream media hits have really done anything. Then this audience member from the conference says it’s done a lot, and he refuted that and encourages him to keep going. I don’t need you to talk for Feroze, but I’m wondering where you stand on that and that idea of awareness or maybe its limits of media and that we need to keep doing what we can. Do you wrestle with that still? Is that a battle for you?
PT: I’ll say this. In embarking on this endeavor, I stopped thinking a long time ago about, what’s the outcome? Obviously, I hope that something good will come out of it. In the making of it, especially when we started, when it was really bleak, I told myself, “You know what? I’m just going to focus on doing.” I cannot fight against the structures, systemic structures, so many things, and I cannot be sorry for how I was or we cannot be sorry for our past actions or whatever it is, and we cannot predict the future. We have the power of now, and that is everything, and so just focus on the moment. Of course, think short-term, medium-term, long-term, but now is all we have, and so be true to oneself.
“I finally feel like I have found my voice, free of the constraints of everything. I can finally be.”
I feel like this film, in the making of this film, I finally feel like I have found my voice, free of the constraints of everything. I can finally be. I hope that this film, for those who are going to watch — and it’s going to be across theaters across the United States and Canada, which is massive, thanks to Watermelon Pictures — I hope that when people watch, they realize that too. Just focus on the now and keep going, because you don’t know how far you can go until you try.
JV: We’re going to wrap it up there. Thank you both for joining us on The Intercept Briefing.
TA: Thank you, appreciate you.
PT: Thank you, Jonah.
JV: We want to hear from you. Tell us what you’re following or want to see more coverage of. Email us at podcasts@theintercept.com, or leave us a voicemail at 530-POD-CAST, that’s 530-763-2278.
That does it for this episode.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor.
Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. William Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.
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