In this vHopeful Conversation, I sit down with filmmaker Poh Si Teng—Oscar‑nominated producer of St. Louis Superman, Emmy‑winning executive producer of Patrice: The Movie, and now first‑time feature director of American Doctor—to talk about why she stepped out from behind the scenes after two decades as a producer, commissioner, and executive to make an urgent, deeply personal film about three American physicians (Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian) who volunteer in besieged hospitals in Gaza and then carry their fight for patients to the halls of Congress. We discuss how she found these doctors and earned their trust; how her team worked with filmmakers inside Gaza at great risk; what she learned about courage, dissent, and speaking from the heart from Dr. Mark Perlmutter, Dr. Thaer Ahmad, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa; and how her own journey—from Malaysia to American journalism, from Al Jazeera and IDA to Tiny Boxer Films—shaped her decision to stay in the United States and “fight as a filmmaker” in the face of war crimes, bipartisan complicity, and a media ecosystem that still treats Palestine as “too hot.”

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Transcript lightly edited. Podcast available on Dream of a Better World, & Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen

Vanessa Hope: I’m very, very excited to be joined by filmmaker Poh Si Teng, an Oscar‑nominated producer of St. Louis Superman, Emmy‑winning executive producer of Patrice: The Movie. She’s a former Al Jazeera documentary commissioner, ABC/Disney creative executive, IDA grants director, and New York Times journalist.

She is now making her feature documentary directorial debut with American Doctor, the film we are here to discuss, which is truly phenomenal. It follows three American physicians—one Palestinian, one Jewish, one Zoroastrian—who volunteer in besieged hospitals in Gaza and return home determined to fight for the patients and colleagues they left behind, carrying their battle from the front lines of war to the halls of Congress and confronting the collision of medicine, politics, and American responsibility. Poh Si Teng, it is such an honor to have you. Thank you for joining.

Poh Si Teng: Thank you so much for having me, Vanessa.

Vanessa: So you’ve spent two decades building a career as a producer, a commissioner, an executive. What was the moment when you knew you had to step out from behind the camera and direct American Doctor yourself?

Poh: You know, Vanessa, I’ll be honest with you, for the longest time I didn’t think that my voice was needed. I always thought my role is to serve other directors, to uphold their vision, and to try to help them make the best film possible.

But when the genocide started, and a year in, it just felt like nothing was happening, nothing was changing fast enough. And as you mentioned earlier at the top, I was a documentary commissioner for Al Jazeera English. So seeing colleagues that I respected being targeted and executed in Gaza, and then just seeing that nothing was changing—it really did something to me.

That’s when I thought: maybe all the roles that I’ve held in the past two‑plus decades, maybe they can come to some use in terms of experience, the people I had known and worked with, and maybe this was the time when I should stop just producing and start directing.

Vanessa: It was a very, very, very good choice.

Poh: You know, I was nervous though, because I think I’m a decent producer—I’ve done this for two decades—but can I make something in my own vision? I was definitely very nervous going into it.

But at the same time it was like, okay, I’m just gonna choose, all chips in, and fast‑forward to today we have the film.

Vanessa: I think you bring so much understanding and experience and compassion and empathy as a director. I was immediately struck, in early scenes of your film, with how you enter the frame and are in a little bit of a conversation with the Jewish doctor.

So I want to just set you up to share how you found these three doctors who are so moving to experience—both as physicians in Gaza and as human beings and family members in the United States. You find this balance between all of the roles that they play and how we see their lives intertwined and them interacting. It’s no easy feat.

So how did you do that—all of it? How did you find them? How did you convince them? How did you gain that personal, familial access and go into Gaza with them and film in the hospitals?

Poh: So, you know, I think when I wanted to make this film, I wanted to help myself, I guess, first and foremost. I live in New York, I’ve had all these different positions, I live and work and am a part of so many different communities. I have Jewish friends, Muslim friends, Palestinian friends, friends who are not from either community.

And it just felt like a year into the genocide, there was no more language to sort of speak truthfully to where I was and also wanting to be effective at the same time. And so I searched for people who could help me.

The first person I found was the Jewish doctor, Dr. Mark Perlmutter. This was sometime, I would say, October 2024, in the fall of 2024, and I remember seeing a news clip of a reporter interviewing him: “So Dr. Perlmutter, you just returned from Gaza. Why do you think there’s no ceasefire?” And Mark says, “There’s no ceasefire because politicians are [expletive] to lobby groups.”

And I was like, who is this guy who just doesn’t mince words, speaks from the heart?

Surely a few days later he was set to be the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for an organization raising funds for Palestinian children in New York. So I went to meet him.

In a room of mostly Palestinians, Muslim Arabs trying to raise funds for children’s relief, you had this white Jewish doctor. And when he spoke, everybody was quiet, and people were sobbing, weeping quietly. I remember the host of the evening telling him, “My brother, we will not forget what you have done for us.”

I introduced myself: “Mark, I am so‑and‑so, I’m a filmmaker, and I’d love to make a film.” And soon after, he introduces me to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Thaer Ahmad—the Zoroastrian doctor and the Palestinian doctor.

In the first weeks of speaking to them on the phone, I could just sense, wow, they are all so different. I also felt like, okay, I bet they don’t agree with each other a lot, but somehow they’ve come together. How are they able to navigate this moment together? That was sort of the beginning for me.

I made the film wanting to find the right language. From Thaer, the Palestinian doctor, I learned the importance of how to be strategic and political. From Mark—he’s much older than me, he’s 70 now—I learned, “Don’t waste time. Why waste time? Speak from your heart.” From Feroze, I learned that if you want to convince the most difficult of audiences, you have to do your homework.

Meeting the three of them and then having the privilege of being able to see their lives up close—all the challenges—was such a privilege, Vanessa, because they really opened up their doors to me. They didn’t hesitate. In fact, I think both Feroze and Thaer will say this—they’ve said this many times: they just didn’t think anyone would care.

Feroze has said to me many times, “I thought, sure, you can make a film, but nobody’s gonna care about this.” And Thaer, recently when we were in a Q&A, said, “You know, I just didn’t want to waste your time. I knew how much you were putting into it financially and I didn’t want to waste your time. I was worried you were wasting your time.”

And fast‑forward to today, I think it was really worth it. That was the beginning. They never hesitated.

I remember a scene which didn’t go into the film. Thaer was talking to his mother—this is the early days of filming—and he and his mom were having a conversation. He says, “You know, nobody cares about this. Only our community cares about this.”

I remember thinking to myself: they will. Maybe not right now, but they will.

After that I spoke to Thaer and I said, “You know, even if nobody cares, we do it for us. We do it for our children. And that’s all that matters. The rest is not in our hands.”

Vanessa: They’re amazing people and doctors, and obviously so are you. I mean, you all risk your lives to go into a war zone during a genocide, as you’ve said, and to help people on the ground. That is literally all you are doing—you’re helping, you’re saving lives.

And these are people who, as you just said, never intended to be on camera. They’re being asked to speak up now because there are so few people who have been bearing witness to what is actually going on on the ground who can do that. But your film is such a gift and made for all the right reasons and so, so moving.

Poh: You know, Vanessa, there is one thing. I didn’t have to risk my life. I will say this, because—how did we film in Gaza? I really want to share this with the audience.

In the early days of filming, I was filming the three doctors in the States and they were getting ready to go into Gaza. Dr. Perlmutter—Mark—he’s the eternal optimist. He’s like, “I will train you as my scrub nurse and take you into Gaza.”

I’m like, first of all, we know who controls the borders. Anybody who does a cursory Google search of my name will know—your bio that you read—I am not a legitimate scrub nurse, Mark. This is never gonna happen.

It’s not just that they don’t let people in; they also turn away so many medical workers because we’ve been speaking out. I knew there was no way I was gonna get under the radar.

So that’s the question: how do we film this? Fortunately, I was a documentary commissioner at Al Jazeera English and I’d been dying to work with my very dear friend, producer Reem Haddad. We were both documentary commissioners for Al Jazeera, covering different regions. I heard that Reem was leaving Al Jazeera and I was like, here’s my chance to work with my buddy.

My buddy, my bestie, worked with this incredible team—two people: Mohammed Sawwaf, our co‑producer, and Ibrahim Al‑Otla, our director of photography in Gaza. Just these two men. I saw their work for another film, a short doc that was made at the end of 2023—amazing vérité—and I was like, “Reem, I want to work with them. Can we work with them?”

They were the ones who filmed inside Nasser Medical Complex at great risk to themselves, while there was a blockade, while they and their families were literally starving. So I just wanted to share that.

Vanessa: Wow. I mean, it’s so, so powerful. It’s such a moving inside view of all that you’ve described: the obstacles to get into Gaza, the obstacles when you’re there working in a hospital, the challenges for every family member when these three doctors go off and they’re doing their work in a war zone.

I’m glad that you were not in the war zone, actually. I mean, that’s a whole other level of training.

Poh: Yeah. You know, and I say this—I think I’m quite experienced. I was a journalist, I was a documentary commissioner, I did safety and security protocols for my teams that have filmed in different parts of the world, conflict regions. Even the fundraising aspect—I was a grants director, I know how to raise money.

But somehow, I guess maybe in hindsight, it was crazy for me to think that this was easy—that I could do it easily. It was a lot harder than I thought.

I did do it, with my friends, with all my colleagues from eight different countries. We pulled it together, our team. But it was definitely a lot harder than we thought and it still remains so hard for our team in Gaza.

Vanessa: Yeah. So you’ve spoken to how standing up for innocent lives should not be controversial, and yet this is a film that will be seen as “too hot” or controversial for many people because it’s about Palestine.

I’m impressed both that you were able to make it and now also in getting it distributed, getting it out. But in the creative process, I feel you have tremendous sensitivity and insight and awareness about the choices you make—how you’re allowing these doctors to speak to what’s going on and understanding what their families are going through.

Was that in your mind from the beginning, or did it develop as you got to know each doctor and learn from them and they were learning from each other?

Poh: I think I just wanted the tools to be able to navigate and to get this privilege of seeing doctors who were literally on the front lines, and to get to see what they and their families and their communities were going through.

It taught me a lot. It also taught me a lot about my own biases. I’ll share that, even after making the film, I can only imagine what it’s like for Thaer, who’s a Palestinian doctor, and for the community and my friends who are Palestinian.

I guess it didn’t occur to me how hard it would also be for Mark. I knew it was gonna be hard for him, but I didn’t realize it until I made the film and saw just how pummeling it can be for him to stand up, and how lonely it is.

So I definitely thought, in my mind, it’d probably be easier for him—“his people aren’t the ones being genocided”—but in many ways I was wrong. From Mark I learned so much about what I thought, in terms of how to navigate.

Mark taught me a lot of surprising lessons because he’s obviously a lot older than me. I would tell Mark sometimes, “Hey man, have you ever thought maybe, you know, think longer‑term, or maybe phrase it this way?”

Mark, if you watch the film, says a lot of un-doctorly things. He doesn’t have any filters. That’s why we love him so much. When I would say, “Have you thought of phrasing things differently?” he would say, “I’m 69, I have no time. And you shouldn’t waste your time either.”

And I’m like, you know what, you’re right. Why can’t I speak from my heart? Why do I have so many challenges saying what needs to be said?

But I also realize—I’m from a minoritized community. I am barely five feet. So I have all these things. But sometimes you don’t have to be that scared and that worried. Mark taught me that.

Vanessa: That’s beautiful. You’re making me think of a few scenes with Mark—who’s the Jewish doctor, just to remind people—that again, I feel your choices were not only sensitive and thoughtful but welcoming to audiences.

You are an ideal director to help audiences feel comfortable wading into this minefield of a subject because you often choose—for example, there’s a good scene in Gaza when Mark, and I believe it’s the Zoroastrian doctor, Feroze, are finished with a CNN interview. Or maybe it’s just Mark who had to be on camera and Feroze is sitting next to him as his friend and support.

The interview’s over, but you’re still rolling, the camera’s on, and Mark is just like, “My God, did I just blow that interview because I’m so emotional and I lead with my heart?” And then he says to Feroze, “That’s why we’re a good team, ’cause you’re more intellectual or strategic about it.”

To show us that behind the scenes is comforting. It’s so human. And you do it at the very beginning with Mark too. I was thinking of that scene early on where he wants to show you photos on his laptop of dead children in Gaza, and you say, “No, no, I’m gonna protect their dignity, I don’t want to show that.” And he’s like, “What? You have to. One, I’ve cleared it all, and two, there’s no time.”

As you’ve just said again, there’s no time. There’s no time to stop now because… (I’m gonna get emotional, hold on).

Poh: From Mark I learned it’s important to feel all the feelings. So often we hold back, we hold back our emotions because it’s seen as a weakness.

But no—when it’s channeled in the right way, it is a source of strength. Talking about this, I mean…

Everything in the film, there are challenges I’m confronted with: who gets to say what, how media is treating the subject matter and, in this case, pummeling the doctors in many ways, being unfair or unkind to them.

I say this as somebody who was in journalism, who was a journalist for so long and worked for all the entities.

And then, you know, the exchange between Mark and Feroze—I have learned over the past two decades in my professional career: when you have a diverse team and teammates who are different from you, you can better handle situations and go forth together. You balance each other out, listen to each other. That was the relationship between Mark and Feroze.

That first scene you talked about—I actually cut that scene initially for myself. It is the second day I’m filming with Mark in early January, and he’s hesitant in showing what he’s showing me visually on his computer. And then he sort of scolds me, and I deserved it.

I’m glad the camera is not facing me; it’s facing him, because I’m actually crying—I’m so ashamed. It’s such a delicate balance of how much you show. You show too much and it’s gratuitous. You show too little and it’s not real.

I remember having this scene for myself. In the early days when you’re trying to raise funds for a documentary, you have scene selects and we would always—our team—we would show a scene on Zoom to potential funders, stop, talk about it, show another scene, talk about it.

This was the first scene that I’d shown potential funders. I remember showing it to one potential funder: show it, stop, and he said, “After seeing that, I guess I’m gonna have to watch your whole movie.” And I said, “I guess you do.” So that was why it stayed.

Vanessa: Wow. That’s the scene with the photographs of dead children on Mark’s laptop. So powerful.

I wonder, since this is really a lot about truth and the courage to dissent and take responsibility, I like how you frame it too as Americans—because obviously our government is funding this genocide, providing weapons to Israel.

How do you find your courage to dissent as a filmmaker, a mother, an American? You’ve spoken to it as a journalist and as a filmmaker a little bit. Are there other layers or levels to where you have this bravery and willingness to speak up and really show people how to find the same kind of courage that you have?

Poh: You know, I wasn’t born in the United States. I was born and raised in Malaysia. I came to the US twenty‑some years ago as a college student, when I was 18, 19, to San Francisco to study journalism.

From Malaysia, my background—the people there are very generous, and it taught me a lot about the importance of being generous. But it’s really in the United States that I learned how to dissent and how to fight for what really matters.

There was such a foundational aspect of my formative education from when I was 19 in college. I was a journalism student, so I worked in different newspapers across the country. I could see all these different movements. At that time it was also the Iraq War.

I feel like I really came into that voice because of a lot of mentors—journalism mentors, leaders who are people of color, Indigenous, Black, Latina, and professors. They helped me understand what’s special about the United States and that I belonged here.

So with the first Trump administration and now we’re talking about a second term, a lot of my friends and peers—and I don’t fault them—but the immediate thought is, “I’m out of here. I’m gonna leave. I can’t deal with this.”

Okay, I get it. I understand that. I know not to fault anybody; everybody has their own reasons. But for me, I feel I have benefited beyond my wildest imagination. No other country could have provided me everything that the US has.

So it almost feels like, yes, I should stand here and I should fight, and the only way I know how to fight is as a filmmaker. So I’m gonna make this film. All the lessons from the past two decades—that’s what I bring.

Vanessa: Yeah. I feel the same way. We thought about leaving when Trump won again—the vast, unbelievable levels of corruption in every possible way, and so overt about it.

But it feels much better to stay and fight and stand for what’s good in this country and the people who are here. It feels hard to actually be away from it.

Poh: In making this film, I learned a lot of lessons. There are a lot of things that are obviously not in one’s control. But there is so much that is in one’s control—and that is our own actions.

Making this film was hard and everybody said it could not be done. What I did and what the team did was: let’s focus on what we can do now and see how far we can go. That’s what we did. We finished the film in a year.

There’s so much. It’s important to think short‑term, medium‑term, long‑term. It’s important to plan. But when you’re in the midst of so much horror everywhere you turn, sometimes you focus on what you can do now. And that helps us through.

Vanessa: Yep. In fact, you take this film— all three doctors go to the halls of Congress, right? I wonder how that felt. The ability to respond to first‑hand testimony from these doctors who’ve just come back from Gaza versus stonewalling them or shutting them out—how did that all feel to you?

Poh: When I think about it, it’s pretty incredible. In terms of the timeline and how much has changed in society: we’ve been on the road for seven, eight months, and we made the film in a year.

If you go back to Christmas 2024, when we started the film, into January—it was really bleak. The doctors rolled up to Capitol Hill trying to knock on doors in January 2025. This was just last year. All doors were shut to them. Everybody ran away. It was depressing. There was so much despair.

Fast‑forward to today. Just last month, in July, over a hundred Democrats voted to block billions of dollars of military aid to Israel. That is a seismic shift. Something is happening.

A lot of my documentary peers tell me, “Your timing couldn’t be more perfect.” And I think back: when we started, it felt like nothing was moving. It felt like we might not even see this day where we are now.

Of course, still so much needs to change. The ground situation in Gaza, what is happening with settlers going in and attacking people alongside the Israeli military in the West Bank—that is very real. It feels like every time there’s something terrible, the next day something even worse happens.

So there is a certain kind of urgency. But as a society as a whole in the United States, people have shifted, and that gives us a lot of hope.

Vanessa: And you feel that this work—so profound and excellent at countering all the dehumanization of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank—can break through somehow?

There are so many friends of Netanyahu with so much money and power in this country—from Trump to Ellison. Do we not worry about them and just worry about the majority?

Poh: You know, it’s interesting, that’s brought up a lot, and Thaer talks quite a bit about the film helps with the fight against the dehumanization of Palestinians. Those are his words.

I never thought of that. I’ll be really honest with you. I just wanted to make a film so that we could see Thaer, Mark, and Feroze for who they were and are. That is all.

I just wanted it to be as real for audiences as it was real to me—the good, everything, the strides that they made, and all the pummeling and challenges that they faced. And then leave it up to the audience. That was all.

It didn’t occur to me, “I’m gonna make this film for so‑and‑so, or to counter so‑and‑so.” I just wanted to make the film to be able to navigate and help myself, and maybe it can help other people navigate this time.

And also just hold up a mirror mainly to myself: What am I doing? I have a daughter who’s five years old. When she’s older, she’s going to be asking—our children, our grandchildren are going to be asking—“What did you do, Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Grandma, at that time?”

I just want to have an answer. And the answer is that we tried.

Vanessa: Yeah. So you began filming Christmas 2024 in the wake of October 7th and all of the escalating violence that followed. You’ve spoken to the training for being a filmmaker or a journalist in a war zone, and the doctors no doubt have their training too.

But as the director of this film, which is so much vérité, I wonder how you were able to take care of your team and your subjects through the process of making the movie.

Poh: You know, this film is about three very good men, but it’s made by a core team of three women. So much of it I owe to my producers.

Kirstine Barfod is a Danish producer, incredible. She was nominated for the Oscars in 2020 for The Cave, about a Syrian doctor in Eastern Ghouta. So she likes doctors in war zones—we have that in common. She had the experience to look after and make sure things are on track.

Then there is Reem Haddad, our other producer, who has the biggest heart. Not only is she really good at producing, but she also does all the emotional housekeeping. Anybody who’s a director here knows: when the director is focused, we can be a little nuts. “It has to get done, it will get done no matter what.” Somebody needs to do the emotional housekeeping, and Reem really looks after the team.

So much of it is the team. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention two other people. The reason I share this is because this is how we do something together that’s very, very hard.

It could not have been possible without Simon Kilmurry, our executive producer. Simon is such a very firm but steady guy. When I have concerns, when our team has concerns, Simon says, “Keep going. You’re on the right path,” because you worry. There’s so much anxiety and fear around this subject matter.

And then Hamza Ali, our other executive producer, co‑founder of Watermelon Pictures. He came in six, seven months into the making of the film when nobody really was interested to support it financially at all—at all. He really gave me the confidence as a director.

He said, “We support you.” Because of Hamza Ali, his brother Badie Ali, and Watermelon Pictures, our film now has the wings to fly, and hopefully the message can go further. That is really the main reason. We just want the message of what the doctors have seen—what their colleagues in Gaza told them to tell Americans, to tell everybody in the western part of the world—to get out.

Vanessa: In addition to this wonderful producing team you’ve just described, you yourself have sat at multiple nodes of the documentary ecosystem—IDA, Al Jazeera, ABC/Disney, now your own Tiny Boxer Films.

Are you able to mobilize a network on behalf of American Doctor to help get it out? Watermelon Pictures must be involved in the distribution, no doubt. But you can imagine so many distributors being afraid that it’s “too hot” or too controversial—when it’s the most urgent kind of story and the most basic human thing to speak up for the most vulnerable when it’s hardest.

Poh: All the experience combined in the past two decades has really helped me and my team navigate this moment and also steer us away from making mistakes. We’re very careful in who we bring onto the team, because we have to be 100% on the same page about things.

Yes, our backgrounds may be different—and they should be different. We should be diverse enough that we can see different opportunities and different challenges. But we have to be on the same page about the fundamentals.

So I think it helped having this diverse work experience. In terms of Watermelon, I mean, I’m excited. The film’s rolling out in so many theaters across the country. I wouldn’t have dreamt, at the start of making this film, that this was gonna happen for this subject matter.

Because everybody, Vanessa, told me it’s not possible. Everybody ran away. All the funders ran away, all the program officers—you know what it’s like. And they’ll say “institutional risk.”

What I will say to filmmakers listening is: it is no small thing when somebody backs you when you’re not “there” yet. Six, seven months in, when Watermelon Pictures and Hamza Ali said, “We’re going to support your film, we’re going to support you,” it is a lot.

I would say to everybody: ride with the people who backed you early on. This is not to say that we didn’t get other offers coming out of Sundance—we did. But for me, it went back to that: who was there when it was the hardest? We will ride together.

We’re so proud to roll out our film with Watermelon distributing us come August.

Vanessa: Amazing. So your film is coming out August 14th, is that right? We’re gonna share all of the information on where people can find the film and go to a theater and see it.

Are there any takeaways you hope viewers—maybe especially Americans paying taxes who may feel distant from Gaza—will think about, or actions they might take, after viewing your film?

Poh: So many thoughts, but I’ll simplify it. It’s helped me a lot, and in the past seven months we’ve shared the film with different audiences. I think it’s fair to say everybody feels like it’s given them some language to navigate this moment.

I hope, for those who are going to watch it, that it will do that for you too. I have to say, in making it and then in rolling it out, I don’t know—I’m a different person now.

When I started, I wanted to run away from the world. I was just so full of despair. Then came rage. Now, having been on the road with the film, with Thaer and Mark and Feroze, there is a way forward now, and there’s no stopping it.

Vanessa: Beautiful. So beautifully said.

Well, thank you so much, Poh. Thank you for your time and this incredible movie, and I hope everyone has a chance to see it and share it and spread the word.

Poh: Thank you so much for having me, Vanessa.

DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER

Poh Si Teng is the producer of the Oscar®-nominated ST. LOUIS SUPERMAN and Emmy® Award–winning executive producer of PATRICE: THE MOVIE. She is a former creative executive for ABC/Disney, documentary commissioner for Al Jazeera, IDA grants director, and New York Times journalist. She is the founder of Tiny Boxer Films, which produces non-fiction feature docs, and docu- and unscripted-series for the US and global majority markets. AMERICAN DOCTOR marks her debut as a feature documentary director.

American Doctor

will have its theatrical debut, thanks to Watermelon Pictures, in New York City on August 11 with Susan Sarandon moderating, and roll out to Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago and select theaters across North America.

Join them in theaters with friends and family for special scerenings and Q&As

8/14: NY at Angelika Film Center

8/21: LA at Laemmle Royal

8/28: LA at Laemmle Glendale,

SF at The Roxie Theater,

Marin at Smith Rafael Film Center, and

Oakland at The New Parkway

For the most up to date info / ticketing you can visit the film website HERE.

In this vHopeful Conversation, I sit down with Academy Award–nominated, Primetime Emmy–winning director Rory Kennedy to discuss her new Netflix documentary, Queen of Chess, about Hungarian prodigy Judit Polgár and her battle against a male‑dominated elite chess world. We explore Polgár’s radical upbringing in communist Hungary under her father’s “genius is made, not born” experiment, the structural and psychological misogyny she faced from legendary players, and how her mantra — “go back to the board and play your best” — transformed discrimination into historic victory. Rory reflects on crafting a punk‑inflected, edge‑of‑your‑seat sports documentary from sixty‑four squares through dynamic music, graphics, and rich archival footage, all while threading in Cold War geopolitics, poverty, and family intimacy. Our conversation links Polgár’s story to current attacks on women’s sports and Title IX in the U.S., the broader fight for gender equity, and the importance of voting and vigilance, and situates Queen of Chess within Rory Kennedy’s larger body of political and social‑justice documentaries and our belief that documentary cinema deserves to stand alongside fiction at the top of the awards landscape.

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Transcript lightly edited. Podcast available on Dream of a Better World, & Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen

Vanessa Hope I am incredibly excited to be joined by Academy Award–nominated, Primetime Emmy–winning documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, who is a phenomenal filmmaker. Her work has explored politics, justice, and the human stakes of power with intelligence and emotional force. She’s the youngest child of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, and has directed and produced more than 40 films. That includes American Hollow, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Last Days in Vietnam, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, and Ethel. Her latest feature, Queen of Chess, which we’re about to discuss — it premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and is now on Netflix — brings her rigor to the story of Judit Polgár, the Hungarian prodigy who took on the male‑dominated world of elite chess.

With visual energy, music, and a rebellious spirit, the film feels as alive, defiant, and exciting as its subject. And Rory is the perfect filmmaker to tell this story. Rory, thank you so much for joining.

Rory Kennedy Thank you for that fantastic introduction, Vanessa.

Vanessa You’re so welcome. You are so deserving.

So, Queen of Chess tells the story of Judit Polgár, who is not just a prodigy but a girl taking on an entire male‑dominated system and sport. When did you first realize that this could be more than a sports documentary, and about so much more — power, gender, resistance?

Rory Well, it was interesting, because Mark Bailey and I — who’s my partner — were approached by a producer who had reached out to us and asked if we might be interested in telling the story of Judit Polgár, and we said, “Well, who is Judit Polgár?”

And then of course we learned that she was the number‑one female chess player and had held that position for almost twenty‑six years. She was the only woman to ever become a grandmaster. She was the youngest grandmaster, beating Bobby Fischer’s record, beating Kasparov’s record.

And you know, I don’t play chess regularly. I know how to play chess, but I knew who Bobby Fischer was and of course Kasparov, yet I had never heard of Judit Polgár. So we dug into her story and were just blown away that we didn’t know this person.

There was so much nuance and so many layers. She had grown up in communist Hungary.

Vanessa Yes.

Rory There were so many blockades for her to be successful and she just, with a sense of purpose and fierceness, broke through them one after another, blowing away all sorts of expectations and all sorts of resistance to her success.

It felt to us to be a really dynamic story and one that deserved to be told, and there was such rich archive to help us tell the story. As we dug into it, we pretty early on got hooked and really felt like, this is a story we need to tell.

Vanessa Yes. In the U.S., Jill Filipovic, this journalist friend, recently wrote a piece about the war on women’s sports in the U.S. Title IX is under attack because conservatives are saying that sports make women less deferential, less oriented toward motherhood and “traditional female grace.” And so there’s a whole new proposal to functionally dismantle Title IX that’s a little bit horrifying.

So this story is so relevant to this country. And I feel like one of the things I love so much about your film is the spirit — the music, the pacing, the sense of exhilaration and rebellion running through it from start to finish. I wonder how, as a director, you thought about shaping the tone so that chess feels cinematic and emotional and almost punk in its energy.

Rory Yeah, we did have a bit of a punk score in there, which was fun. When I was reading about Judit’s story, I was on the edge of my seat: Is she going to beat this champion? Is she going to win in this contest?

It’s interesting, because you think, “Okay, chess — pieces on a board, right? How is that actually exciting?” But then when you learn what the stakes are, and how one move can change everything, and how much they’re thinking so many moves in advance, and what’s going on in Judit’s head, I found it to be a very edge‑of‑your‑seat sports documentary.

So we did — and you had mentioned it being a sports documentary — we did strive to make it along those lines. And at the same time, we wanted to layer in this nuance of growing up in communist Hungary, growing up in poverty, people really resisting her because she was a woman, and growing up in a society where they really didn’t like people who did things differently than everybody else.

And the parents kind of had their own interesting story, where the father had an idea that geniuses were created, they weren’t born — that you had to create the circumstances. He married a woman who was willing to prove his experiment.

When Judit’s oldest sister was five years old, he said to her, “Okay, what do you want to do? You’re good at math and you’re good at chess,” and she had just found some chess pieces in the house. He asked, “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” And she said, “I don’t know — chess, I guess, that’s fun.”

So the oldest sister started with chess. Then there were two other girls born to the family, Judit being the youngest. They all grew up in this environment to prove that if you do the same thing over and over again from a very young age and make it fun, you can be the very best.

As a result of this, the government came in; they tried to throw the parents into prison. They tried to throw them into a mental hospital. And Judit was a part of this. She would go to chess contests and she’d be thrown out because she was the only girl. She was five, six years old and she was just beating older man after older man after older man.

It’s extremely satisfying to watch, because it’s this unstoppable champion who is so driven, has such guts, and also has a sense of humor and a warmth about her that just adds to the whole story. So we were thrilled to tell this story and to try to add some stylistic dimension to it — like the punk score — and also the graphics, to keep it really engaging and lively.

Vanessa It is, and it’s so unquestionable, her talent, when you see her as such a young girl playing all these older men, as you said, with guts and confidence and just a sense of the game. You really make the game edge‑of‑your‑seat sports and it’s so fun to watch and learn from.

Rory It was exciting for us because — I don’t want to reveal too much about the film, but as you know, having watched it — there’s a pretty intense moment with Kasparov where she plays him. It’s a kind of seminal moment, and one that people in the chess world are very aware of.

I didn’t know anything about it, but we were amazed that we were able to find footage that captured that moment. It’s pretty dramatic to watch it in the film and see how it plays out, what the implications are, and how that narrative between Judit and Kasparov begins in this moment and then develops over time — how it changes, and the excitement and thrill of their relationship and their competition with each other, but then of course also a growing friendship.

So there are lots of unexpected twists and turns in her story and consequently in the film, that I hope make it enjoyable to watch and entertaining.

Vanessa Yeah. You captured that. It is so enjoyable to watch and entertaining. And we won’t give away this important moment of competition in the rivalry between Judit and Garry Kasparov, but it is remarkable that you get him in interview, that you show what happened, and that we see their evolving relationship exactly as you described, in amazing archive. There is a real friendship.

But I wonder, as a filmmaker and storyteller, how you came to understand the way misogyny operates in these elite sports like chess — not just structurally, but psychologically. You really show us that, and the interviews go right there.

Rory Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting because throughout the film you really hear first‑hand how these chess champions, like Bobby Fischer, would say things like, “Women just aren’t made to play chess.” They’d say women don’t have the smarts or the intelligence that men have. Others say it’s too challenging for women to sit in one place and be able to focus for that long.

Still others are very dismissive of Judit. She talks about how, when she would beat these world champions — which she did again and again and again — they would always say, “I just had a bad day.”

Like they couldn’t acknowledge that they were beaten by a woman fair and square. It was always, “Well, she’s very lucky,” or “I had a bad day.”

Despite all that — and then there’s that scene in the film where she’s at a very prestigious tournament and the norm is, after you play, you shake the hand of your opponent, whether you win or lose — she was beating one player after another and they would stand up and walk away and wouldn’t shake her hand. We see this in the footage.

It’s pretty revelatory, and one of the things I had mentioned that drew us to this film is the archive and how rich it is, because we’re not just telling people these things happened. You hear it from Bobby Fischer — you hear his words. You see people not shaking her hand. You see people cheating against her.

For a lot of people who’ve had these kinds of experiences — whether it’s women in sports or in other environments or professions — it’s enormously relatable. Audiences, from what I’ve heard, really connect to that part of the story.

Vanessa Do you think it was COVID and every single person on the planet watching The Queen’s Gambit at the same time, or is there something inherent in chess that just makes it so popular and watchable? Why is it such a compelling sport to watch, do you think?

Rory I think when you start to understand chess — and we tried to really break it down, particularly because I, Mark, and our team largely didn’t play chess — we had to make a movie that made sense to us.

Vanessa I love that. Yeah. I don’t play either, and I learned so much about the game from your film. I loved all your graphics, I loved all of that.

Rory Thank you. We really tried to break it down so everybody could understand it and have it be accessible. But when you do understand how the moves work and what the stakes are, I think it’s very hard not to be pulled into the game.

They use so many metaphors: it’s a battle, it’s a fight, it’s enormously technical, it’s mathematical, it’s philosophical, it’s spiritual. It operates on so many levels, and yet it’s sixty‑four squares on a black‑and‑white board, with people just moving pieces, right?

It’s interesting — the juxtaposition of the simplicity of it and the visual element of it, which of course is so important in filmmaking, and then, how do you translate all of those layers? That challenged us, as you can imagine. “How do you do that? This is going to be really, really hard.” But it challenged us in a way that was fun and exciting and pushed the limits of our creative process to really make this fun and dramatic.

I’ll take some credit, but I had a fantastic team of editors, and Mark Bailey as the writer–producer. Kevin McAllister was in there as well. We had wonderful editors — Azin Samari and Jesse Overman — and we partnered very early on with Netflix to make this film, and the executives there also really contributed.

So it was all of us really pushing. We all shared a similar vision, which was great — to get everybody on the same page. Then it was about, how do you deliver this? What can we do with music? What can we do with graphics? What can we do with storytelling? How do we bring these characters alive? How can we use archive in interesting ways and really push this to be engaging and fun, and help people understand what the stakes are, even people who’ve never played chess before?

That was an exciting challenge.

Vanessa Yeah. And as you said, there are so many stakes and layers because you’re also moving us through Cold War Hungary and a changing Europe and this global chess world. This is countries against countries who are playing. But you never lose the intimacy with Judit and her family and her father’s unique experiment. You manage this balance.

I wonder if you thought at all about what we can learn in the U.S. — women who play sports or who care about not losing Title IX — from Judit’s story. Because on this intimate level you share, she was under a certain level of control with her father, but she also evolves as a person and ends up seeming to have a great life.

So I wonder what people in this country who are concerned about what’s happening here might take away from watching your amazing film.

Rory Yeah. Well, listen, I think — of course you can imagine I’m engaged with the stakes of the election. In terms of the bigger issues of Title IX and the assault against women in this country over the last couple of years, I think that people can vote and look at who’s making these decisions, and whether those decisions are in the interests of women and of our children — girls and boys, for that matter.

So I think it’s important for people to be monitoring and aware of what’s happening, not just in sports but in other areas, in terms of the treatment of women and the fairness of what is accessible for women. That’s my larger feeling. We’ve got an election coming up that’s very important, as we all know. Focusing on that and voting and doing what you can is hugely important.

That aside, in terms of watching this film, I think what you’ll find, for people who haven’t seen it, is that what Judit’s father would say to her over and over again when she was up against situations where she was treated unfairly because she was a woman was: “Go back to the board and play your best. Go back to the board, play your best.”

Vanessa Thank God she kept winning. Thank God she kept winning.

Rory Exactly. She just kept at it. She wouldn’t go down the rabbit hole of “This is unfair, this person did this, da‑da‑da.” She was just like, “I’m going to play,” and then she kept winning over and over again.

At some point they couldn’t deny it. They couldn’t keep saying, “Well, you’re just lucky,” or “I had a bad day.” When she breaks through and she’s the youngest grandmaster — you can’t really dismiss that. When she’s the only woman who’s ever become a grandmaster, the only woman who’s been in the top fifty chess players in the world, it just becomes undeniable.

When you see her success — and she points this out in the film — she actually has a lack of resentment and a deep understanding of why she faced that level of pushback and, arguably, discrimination. In fact, none of these men had ever seen a woman be so successful. Just the fact that she was so successful, more than anything, made them challenge their assumptions.

Vanessa Yes.

Rory It’s very hard when you’re given no resources. There’s a contrast between the support that Kasparov was given in Russia, in his town, where he had all of the best people training him. He got all the resources. He was able to fly all over the world at a very young age.

Meanwhile, she wasn’t allowed to leave Hungary or communist Europe. She wasn’t able to engage in these big tournaments. They grew up in poverty, so they spent all of their resources getting a makeshift group of trainers to come in. Then the father learned how to play chess in order to train the kids. They had a library of books and they read the books on how to learn.

When you contrast that with the support that the men were given, it’s kind of stunning that she was that successful.

Vanessa It’s stunning, it’s inspiring, it’s so well told, and I’m so happy it’s you who told this story. Do you have any last thoughts on your whole body of work — all the documentaries you’ve made — and where this may sit in that body of work for you?

Rory Well, thank you for saying that, Vanessa. I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you today. This is a special film for me, and it was great to be on the journey with it and go with Judit to Sundance and have her be there — to see how young people, young girls and boys in particular, are so moved and motivated by her story.

We had a chance to show the film to students in Utah, and they just thought she was so cool. They were so psyched and gave her a standing ovation. It was so sweet to see how much her story is and continues to be motivating for other people. I really love that legacy.

Recently, it was fun because a couple of weeks ago she was asked by the head of the government in Hungary to run for president. She ended up declining, but I love the recognition she’s getting and the acknowledgement of everything she’s done in her life. It’s fun to find somebody whose story really wasn’t told, to elevate them, to see them go off in the world.

Not that she hasn’t already gone off in the world, but to just help emphasize and buoy and support her story and get it out there, and see how it can impact others, is enormously satisfying.

Vanessa Yes, and I’m just going to say this. I listened to your interview at Sundance and I loved the way you talked about how Sundance not only started your career because your first film went there and succeeded, but that you appreciate that Sundance has always treated documentaries on the same level as fiction films.

The larger world has confusion about this, that documentaries are somehow “less than.” I’ve spoken to filmmakers who’ve described it as being like the second‑class citizens in the Oscar campaign race: you’re put at the children’s table, you’re segregated.

I think it’s high time that a documentary enters the top‑ten list of films for Best Picture Oscar. I’m just saying, this is a good one to enter that race, because the level of male domination in the fiction film world right now is so sick, and I’m so sick of it. So please let this go into the top ten, Rory.

Rory Thank you, Vanessa. You’re the best. I appreciate you — I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and see you. So thanks to you and Ted. Okay, take care.

Vanessa Okay, all right. Same. Thanks. Thanks, Rory.

Rory Kennedy is an Academy Award–nominated, Primetime Emmy–winning documentary filmmaker who has directed and produced more than forty films. Her films have appeared across major platforms including Netflix, HBO, National Geographic, PBS, and Hulu.

Kennedy and her husband, Emmy-nominated writer and producer Mark Bailey, co-founded Moxie Films. This year, Kennedy directed and produced FREEFALL: A RECKONING FOR BOEING, a Netflix feature documentary and follow-up to DOWNFALL: THE CASE AGAINST BOEING, uncovering further revelations about the Boeing Company. The film premiered at the DC/DOX Film Festival in June 2026 and launches on Netflix this August. Also this year, Kennedy directed and produced QUEEN OF CHESS, a feature documentary about Judit Polgár, the greatest female chess player in the world. The film premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, Kennedy’s tenth documentary to debut there, and launched globally on Netflix on February 6.

Recent projects include the HBO documentary series THE SYNANON FIX (2024), examining the rise and transformation of the controversial addiction treatment organization, THE VOLCANO: RESCUE FROM WHAKAARI, a Netflix feature documentary about the deadly 2019 eruption of New Zealand’s Whakaari/White Island volcano that became the platform’s #1 film worldwide, and DOWNFALL: THE CASE AGAINST BOEING, a feature documentary investigating the two tragic Boeing 737-Max crashes which went on to break the Netflix Global Top 10.

Kennedy’s earlier work includes the Academy Award–nominated LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM and HBO’s ETHEL, which received five Primetime Emmy nominations. In 2007, her HBO film GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB premiered at Sundance and went on to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Special.

Kennedy has served two terms as a Governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is the founder of the Climate Emergency Fund.

WATCH QUEEN OF CHESS NOW ON NETFLIX

…and stay tuned for our next vHopeful conversation about FREEFALL: A RECKONING FOR BOEING, Rory’s Netflix feature documentary coming out in August this year!

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