The American Doctor
A Feature Adaptation of the short film “Aleppo”
Synopsis
The American Doctor is a tense drama about Hanan, a first-generation American doctor of Syrian descent who returns to New York after surviving an attack on a hospital in Idlib during the Syrian Civil War. After being diagnosed with prosopagnosia (face blindness), Hanan can’t recognize the faces of those closest to her, including her American husband, and her world is turned upside down.
When she meets Rima and Tarek, a Syrian refugee couple she treats at her New York hospital, she is drawn into their world, connecting with them over their shared experience in war. With her marriage and career in doubt, and the world on the brink of a global pandemic, Hanan must reclaim her identity in the aftermath of a brutal war.
Screenwriters Laila and Zaina Ujayli
Laila and Zaina Ujayli are Syrian-American twin sisters who grew up between Saudi Arabia and the Midwest. Laila holds Master’s degrees in Film Aesthetics and Public Policy from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She is currently a JD candidate at Harvard Law School and associate editor at Inkstick Media. Zaina is a PhD student at the University of Southern California, where she focuses on recovering the stories of twentieth century Arab diaspora women writers in the Americas. She has previously worked in the fields of human rights and refugee resettlement. Their feature screenplay Four Floors in Raqqa won both the CineStory Foundation’s 2021 Feature Fellowship and ScreenCraft’s 2021 True Story and Public Domain Screenplay Competition.
Director Anthony Grippa
ANTHONY GRIPPA is a director, editor, and photographer based in New York. His directing credits include RUNNING FUNNY (2009) and HALF BROTHER (2016), both of which screened at film festivals across the country and were released on multiple digital platforms. His latest projects, including the short film, Aleppo, shed light on people who live and work in conflict zones, and those who are affected by the aftermath of war.
Producer Bayard Outerbridge
With over fifteen years of experience as a film, tv and digital media producer, Bayard's honed skill set and keen eye for talent are evident in his previous work.
His producing credits include multiple award winning AFI films MACHSOM (AFI Fest, Tampere Film Festival), WILD HORSES (AFI Fest, Palm Springs International Film Festival) , starring Brooke Shields and WORLD WAR Z's Mireille Enos, shot by Academy Award winning cinematographer Robert Richardson and ALEPPO starring Laetitia Eido ("Fauda", Netflix; "Liaison", Apple TV+). With experience in film finance, development and complex productions involving everything from stunts, helicopters and horses to foreign languages, children and multi-jurisdictional shoots, Bayard brings a range of experience to any project. His TV credits include Seasons 4 and 5 of Emmy Award Winning Sea Rescue (ABC), for which he produced 67 episodes shot in every coastal U.S. state, SNOWFALL (FX), BARRY (HBO), THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF SALT LAKE CITY (Bravo), PEOPLE MAGAZINE INVESTIGATES (Discovery), THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL OF ALL (FX), and VOIR (David Fincher, Netflix), involving street closures, pyrotechnics, driving shot rigs, multi-jurisdictional permitting and many other fun logistical puzzles. Recent commercial production clients include Ubisoft, Meta, Twitter (now X), Honda, Toyota and Disney. Bayard received his BFA in film production with distinction from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University and his MFA in producing from the American Film Institute.
He currently travels between Bermuda and Los Angeles where he serves as the Managing Member of Newbold Harbor Entertainment.
Executive Producer of Oscar nominated “Stranger at the Gate” - Dr. Conrad Fischer, MD
Dr. Fischer is the Residency Program Director in the Department of Medicine at Brookdale Hospital Medical Center, as well as a Professor of Medicine and Professor of Physiology at Touro College of Medicine in New York City. In 2017 he was the producer of the off-Broadway play "Lost and Guided", an original play by The Angle Project based on interviews and the real life stories of Syrian refugees, especially doctors in Syria and the United States.
He completed a Fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and has been involved in medical education at a national level for the last 25 years. He is Vice-Chair of Medicine and Chair of the institution’s Ethics Committee at Brookdale. He is ordained as an Interfaith Minister. He is the author of 15 textbooks of medicine with 250,000 copies in print. He holds a Master's degree in theology from Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University. As well as being the Executive Producer of Oscar-nominated short film STRANGER AT THE GATE, the short film ALEPPO and the feature film THE AMERICAN DOCTOR, Dr. Fischer is our chief medical advisor.
Dr. Fischer is delighted to be fortunate enough to come join our team. He feels sure real narrative stories of Syrian refugees in theatre and film will be able to change minds.