Kind: captions
Language: en
we would come up to
these
rafts and these boats that were in
really dire shape
and people would be pushed off and
people would jump off and people would
fall into the water
and
um some of them couldn't swim
and so we found ourselves in this moment
where we had a choice we could film
someone drown in front of us
or we could put our cameras down and
pull them out of the water
the following is a conversation with
skye fitzgerald a two-time
oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker
who made the film's hunger ward about
the war in yemen
lifeboat about the search and rescue
operations off the coast of libya and
50 feet from syria about the war in
syria
this is the lex friedman podcast to
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in the description and now dear friends
here's skye
fitzgerald
nearly
811 million people worldwide are hungry
today and 45 million people are on the
edge of famine across 43 countries
how do you feel how do you make sense of
that many people suffering from hunger
and famine in the world today
i don't know if i can make sense of it
lex i mean i think um
it's
deeply disturbing to me that as a global
community we've allowed
this number of people
to go hungry when the food to feed them
exists and the resources
to feed them exists i think the thing
that disturbs me most about those
figures
is that many of those
who are
starving today or going hungry today
are the net result of war
and intentional acts by leaders
to starve entire populations and that's
the most deeply disturbing part to me
um
you know your history um and we all know
that you know deeply
embedded in the geneva conventions post
world war ii
the intent of one of those articles was
to
ban the use of starvation as a weapon of
war
because of what hitler did during world
war ii
that's been reiterated multiple times
over the years in international
humanitarian law including in 2018
because of the saudi blockade over yemen
and yet to this day
starvation as a weapon of war continues
to be used in ethiopia
obviously in ukraine right now and in
yemen with the blockade over the country
and that that disgusts me
that the law is in place but it won't be
enforced by the international bodies and
the nation-states that are that make up
the international community so when the
starvation is a result
of human actions human decisions that's
especially
painful to make sense of for me
personally yeah i think that if you and
i sitting here didn't eat for three days
um and had to you know lay our head on
the sidewalk for a couple nights
i think we would take
you know hunger
and homelessness a lot more seriously
and i think that's
for some reason that's missing at this
moment in history tragically and i think
until that we can generate enough
empathy
um that's immediate for all of us to
understand what that means to go hungry
i'm not sure we're gonna sort of marshal
the the global community to solve it
i did just that by the way uh faster for
three days uh recently
it's fundamentally different
i think because
the thing that would be terrifying to me
is not the fasting but the hopelessness
at the end of the fast like uh i
wouldn't know when the next meal is
coming yeah i always had the freedom to
have the meal yeah the fear for not just
your
own
ability to eat and survive but your
families if there's loved ones that's
the other thing i don't have i'm single
so i feel like the worst suffering is
watching
somebody you love that you're supposed
to be a caretaker of
and you can't take care of them
and if all of that is caused by
leaders in
in um
as as a weapon of war that
is especially painful so how can we
um
how can we help
what are the ways to help
how do we alleviate this the suffering
well i think on the you know
i think on the humanitarian front we
have to be aggressive
um and attentive
and intervene in significant ways and i
think on the political front we have to
hold
uh players accountable
for their actions so the leaders that
start the war so you when you say we
have to speak up about the
the decisions and the humans making
those decisions yeah that lead to the
stuff for example let's make it concrete
so you know when i was i don't want to
jump ahead but when i was filming hunger
ward in yemen
um you know i met
a mother
who when she gave birth weighed 70
pounds the mother weighed 70 pounds
and
so her
daughter
was starved in the womb
right
when she was born
um there was she was born into a world
with no breast milk
very little formula right so she was
starved before birth she was born into a
world where she continued to be starved
right by a mother who herself was
starved
i watched that child her name is sila
die in front of me
right
asula had no chance
for
all those things we hoped for for a
child in this world
she she didn't have a chance to grow up
she didn't have a chance to
discover love she didn't have a chance
to have a career she was robbed of all
of those things
because of the insidious nature of
hunger that she was born into
she didn't have to die
she she
you know she was not starving she her
mother was being starved right because
of the blockade over the country now who
instituted that blockade
mbs in saudi arabia with the
reinforcement and sort of tacit approval
of the united states our own
government here
and so there are people who are
responsible for the starvation of
children and i think we need to hold
them accountable
now that's incredibly difficult to do
but just because it's difficult doesn't
mean it not it ought not to be done
and we'll talk about
many cases like these throughout history
and going on today let's talk about
hunger award yeah let's dive in
that you are you've been nominated for
an oscar twice this is one of the times
for a
documentary
can you please tell me
what
hunger ward the last hope between war
and starvation is about
hunger ward is a short documentary
that really is an attempt to illustrate
the effects of
uh the conflict on yemen specifically on
civilians
and we document it in in both the north
and the south of the country because
it's a bifurcated country the south is
held by
the globally recognized government in
the south which up until last week
was run by at least on the surface by
president hadi hold up in riyadh
he was essentially
removed from office last week by
most people would agree the emiratis and
the saudis to put in place a
presidential council
so we wanted to show that starvation was
happening in very similar fashions both
in the south and the north so and we
wanted to do this film
because
um so few people in the west know
anything about the conflict in yemen nor
the us's complicity in it and so my
intent with the project was try to bring
it to a larger western audience as an
attempt to intervene and change the
political status quo which allows
the use of starvation in yemen to
continue so us complicity
who are the bad guys
now
the world
unfortunately cannot be painted in black
and white of good guys and bad guys
but for the purpose of conversation
who is um
doing
causing suffering in the world in this
situation
who started the war why
and then of course the roots of war go
back in history yeah but let's start at
the
at the top
well there are bad actors and there are
less bad actors right i mean i think
that's always the case in war probably
and everybody loses in war yeah
i concur with that statement um
in the case of the sort of the status
quo in yemen right now um it's a
completely asymmetrical war
and so the saudi coalition which is made
up of primarily saudi arabia the
emiratis united states
france
britain
supplying weapons but it's really driven
and catalyzed by saudi arabia
and it's asymmetrical
to a great extent just because of the
incredible firepower
by air that the saudis
use continuously to pummel northern
yemen um when i was there
uh the the sheer volume of air strikes
is is hard to describe and we show the
result of only one in the film really
but it's an asymmetrical war the de
facto authorities of the north um ansar
allah also known as the houthi rebel
group you know they um
they don't have an air force right they
have a drone force but they don't have
an air force and so it's a from a
military standpoint it's completely
asymmetrical the saudis really don't
commit troops to the ground they use
only proxies to fight on the ground what
is the narrative
they use
to justify war
so there's a story on every side
in war some of it
is grounded in truth some of it is not
at all grounded in truth
also known as propaganda
what's the narrative used by the saudis
for this war
the saudi line is essentially that the
houthis are an illegitimate government
um and that that it's really a proxy
rule war between iran who supports the
houthis nominally um
and the rest of the world that's the
saudi narrative the reality is something
altogether different while the houthis
do receive support from iran this is a
war
started by and sustained by mbs in saudi
arabia who's mbs muhammad
and who is he he is the son of the ruler
of saudi arabia
what's his power i'm asking basic dumb
questions he's the de facto ruler of the
military and uh yes he sees
the control of the country several years
ago even though he on the surface you
know is not the rule of saudi arabia he
is he's the crown prince and sorry to
interrupt often but
who is he as a man what's your sense of
yeah so you know i've never met him and
i i likely will never meet him hopefully
um
but he is i know a lot about him through
his actions sort of in the mena region
the middle east and north africa region
and um
he is one of three in my view as an
american sitting here in the u.s three
people in the world that
i think
has caused such an incredible volume of
misery and suffering
and murder on this planet
that um
i think
if
if he weren't around the world would be
a lot better place and i'm not a violent
person by nature but there are three
human beings that i think
um the world would be better off without
do you mind before i ask other questions
mentioning the three oh yeah assad is
one in syria and that comes out of an
earlier project that i did in syria and
turkey
um and and what i saw
assad as a as a ruler do to his own
people
um
and putin would be the third
those three human beings are uh
murderers on a scale
beyond imagining
on mbs
are you able to think as a documentary
filmmaker as a human being as a scholar
as a thinker with an open mind about a
man like that who does evil onto the
world and what that must feel like to be
in inside the mind of that man so
basically
consider his world view with most evil
people
with all people probably but with people
who do evil onto the world they think
they're doing good
yeah they're the hero of their own story
right yeah and so to be able to place
yourself
i feel like for me to understand a
person i have to
literally like the way actors kind of
have to do um
you know live inside the body of the
person they're trying to study inhabit
the character inhabit the person yeah
are you able to do that or because you
uh are also studying the people who
suffer
as a result as a consequence of their
actions you just
you put put them in a box
and you say i hate the person in that
box that's going to move on this goes
back to your black and white statement
at the beginning right it's like
the world as a whole of course you know
is every gradation of gray right my
background is theater likes and so i was
trained long before i picked up a camera
to inhabit other characters right i have
two degrees in theater and so that level
of sort of like
walking in other people's shoes and
trying to understand and empathize with
their world view is fundamental to how i
live my life and how i do my work
so in the case of those three that i
named assad mbs and putin yeah i can i
can go there and think through how they
came to be who they are right
from afar right and and after i go
through that process
i still don't think there's any way
that
one can justify
what they've done
we're going to talk about each of those
people for sure well i'm not an expert
on well any of them you're a human being
which makes you
a uh partial expert on human nature
because nobody's an expert you're as
good as anyone else anybody who actually
cares a camera and listens
and observe others isn't especially an
expert of human nature
um who's willing to take that leap and
truly understand somebody of any level
not leaders i feel like to understand a
leader you have to first understand
humans and to understand humans you have
to see humans that they're worse than
their best
which is something that
you've definitely done so let's let's
stick on hunger ward this lens that
you've chosen to look at this is through
a single maybe maybe you can speak to
that
you've mentioned
the starvation as a result of war
what is the documentary like what is the
lens you've chosen to
give
the world a peek at the results at the
suffering that's a result of this war
people a lot of times will ask me if
they've seen hunger ward you know
um
they asked where the hope is
right you you read the byline earlier
the last hope
and
what i try to focus on in in many of my
films including hunger ward is
in in the very difficult
context of war as the cases in hunger
ward in yemen
i i look for hope and i look for
inspiration and i do that through people
who are doing incredible things under
the most difficult circumstances
so
when i set out to do a film about
starvation
in yemen right i mean i mean just listen
to that statement where's the hope there
right and yet
what i found what i discovered were
human beings that we could tell the
story through
who are incredible inspirational human
beings doing amazing things every day
one of those
is makia maji a nurse practitioner in
the north of the country at a small
rural clinic and another is dr aida
al-sadiq who is a pediatrician in the
south of the country and so we chose to
tell the story sort of through their
experiences as caregivers
devoting their lives to try to save this
entire
cohort this entire generation of
children that has been born into
starvation
and that's an incredible difficult task
but equally inspirational to watch these
human beings devote every minute of
every day
to save a child i mean in my view
nothing is more important than that
action maybe on that point real quick
so there is suffering at scale
starvation at scale there's
i mean the numbers um
maybe you can mention in yemen what are
the numbers in terms of people and
starvation but
from a perspective of a nurse
practitioner or a doctor
you always have you're treating one
person in front of you
so how do you make sense of that
calculus
of like there's a huge number of people
suffering
and then there's just the person in
front of you
is that all we can do as humans is just
to help one person at a time is that the
right way to think
and to approach these problems or can
you actually make sense of the numbers
speaking just as a
human being i think the scale of
suffering is so great in yemen
that
um
i i think i'd be overwhelmed right if i
focused on that scale you know
you've probably heard that you know a
child dies every 75 seconds in yemen
from hunger right so we've been sitting
here how long you know 35 minutes or so
that's a good handful of children that
have already passed away
so to overcome sort of i think that
danger of psychic numbing which can
happen when you think about suffering on
such a large scale
as a filmmaker as a human being
i have to focus in on the individuals on
those those human beings in front of me
and i think that's exactly what dr
al-sadiq and makia do to keep going each
day and one of the amazing things about
these two
health care providers that we showcase
in the film is that
they treat anyone who shows up
right they don't have to have money
they don't have to have any resources
they just have to get to the clinic or
the hospital
and it's incredibly moving
to see
sort of the flexibility of their
thinking in terms of how they make that
work
makia for example i saw her in the north
of the country it's an incredibly rural
clinic that she works at so so it's like
a magnet for all the cases in the north
of the country people come from hundreds
of kilometers away sometimes for
specialty treatment of of pediatric
malnutrition
and i
one time i saw a child come in
and it was a male relative that brought
this young girl in
and you know just because of
sort of the gender dynamics in yemen you
know there had to be
a parent or a relative there to stay
with the child while they're at the
clinic and it was a male relative and so
you know what many doctors in that
instance would do would just turn them
away and instead what makia did is she
walked into one of the rooms talked to
one of the other mothers and convinced
them to become the temporary guardian
essentially of this child until a female
relative could could arrive so you know
she's flexible she she finds solutions
rather than allowing the problems to
deter solutions one child at a time yeah
yeah one shot at a time
you mentioned that you saw
a child die in front of you
so when you're filming this as a
filmmaker
um what's that like
psychologically
philosophically
creatively as a filmmaker as a
storyteller
what
what do you do there as a human and as a
filmmaker oh what's that whole
experience like because you get to like
you said you take it through the whole
journey
of a starving mother giving birth to a
starving child
um it's not something i want to film
it's not something that i
certainly
wanted to happen or seek out um but it
happened
and the sad truth is that it happens
every week at that hospital
and so
when it happened in this instance
i felt an incredible responsibility to
do justice to that reality
to acknowledge that a child had just
died of starvation related causes
um
and and to find some way if the parents
wanted us to
to integrate that into this story we'd
bring back to
uh
a western audience
and and you know
i i
i've
filmed
many difficult things over the years and
um
usually i really
love filming and i didn't love filming
hunker ward it was not a
a process that i enjoyed on any way
she'll perform sadly
because of the content because you know
who wants to watch a child die in front
of them i don't but i did and i had to
and and when that happened i felt an
incredible responsibility again
to go deep right to go deep with that
family to to tell the story of this
hospital
with every sort of
ounce of focus and and talent that i
could bring to the story because
people should know
that um
children are dying of starvation right
now as we sit here and that that doesn't
have to happen and it is happening
because of political dynamics that we
can intervene on
is there times you wanted to
walk away
quit the telling of the story
come back to the united states
where
you can be just
appreciate
the wonderful comfort you can have just
sitting there and having food and
and uh
freedom to do whatever you want
those kinds of things doesn't have to be
united states yeah in a lot of places in
the world
well that dynamic of sort of like
survivor's guilt you know on some level
definitely exists one of the hardest
things about filming hunger forward
actually was
eating right because we were in these
malnutrition clinics they're called
tfc's therapeutic feeding centers
where
you know
over a long period of time children lost
the ability to eat normal food right
and couldn't digest it and just you know
were literally starving and
the the practitioners were trying to
bring them back to a state of of
thriving
but to leave those clinics right and to
go to our camp or to go to our hotel
and then to have access to food right
because we could buy food on the streets
and in the hotels
um
i mean it was a very intentional act
throughout the course of the shoot to
look at a piece of bread right or to
look at a bowl of rice
and and
think about that child in the tfc and
think about how the privilege of having
that bowl of rice that i could eat and
digest
so it certainly every day
um helped me appreciate right
the privilege i had every bite you take
with everybody uh absolutely and so so i
wouldn't call it guilt it wasn't exactly
guilt but it was definitely mindfulness
right about meditate on on the suffering
of people who yeah who can't that's
right exactly so that knowledge sort of
it was it was catalytic in some ways it
sort of moved us forward really wanting
to
shape the most powerful story we could
because we were surrounded by so much
suffering every day
how did that
film in that movie change you as a man
as a human being
you've filmed a few difficult
documentaries
that one
is a heavy one when you think of the
person you wore before you filmed it
and now when you wake up every morning
you look yourself in the mirror
how's that person different
every
documentary i do changes me in a
different way
like i am not
static in that sense right and preformed
it's just like i change with every
project because so many of them are
difficult and challenging right and so
in order to do them
i have to allow myself to change and be
changed by them in the case of hunger
ward
you may remember
the girl omama
um who's the the 10 year old girl who we
showcase in
in audin in the south of the country
and um you know
we we were there when she was admitted
to the hospital
and when she was admitted you know this
10 year old girl weighed 24 pounds and
she could
barely stand up
and um we started you know with the
permission of the family to start to
document
her treatment and to see what would
happen with this young girl who is so
severely malnourished
and we watched her
be treated by
the nurses and the doctors
in sadaka hospital and slowly over the
course of a couple weeks
we saw her change we start her start to
sort of
gain strength and start to recover
and she also watched the caregivers very
carefully
and i watched her
watch them
and um
i'll never forget there was a moment
where
um about two and a half weeks i think
into her treatment we walked into a room
and i saw her
offering a cap full of water
to
another younger child who was also
starving right this the shot's actually
in the film
and and so to see omama this child who's
starving
giving sustenance to a younger
more vulnerable child who is also
starving
me deeply
right
so i saw
her
learn from the caregivers around her
right and as a human being as a
filmmaker i was incredibly inspired by
omama that capacity for compassion is
there even within a ten-year-old girl
who's starving right and so so you asked
what changed me um that's one moment
right i i rather than being crushed by
such heavy content it was actually the
opposite where i came away inspired by a
ten-year-old girl
and you know i didn't anticipate that i
didn't think that's what this content
would do but it's what it did it it it
reinforced for me
sort of this incredible capacity we all
have as human beings right
to do good right to even within the most
difficult circumstances to choose
who we become and what we do
and and and a 10 year old girl taught me
that to reinforce that for me
were you able to
feel
the culture of the people so
the the language barrier
be able to break through the language
barrier or the culture barrier you know
to understand the people
you know um because even even suffering
has a language of of sorts depending on
where you are the way people joke about
things the way they cry
the way
this is an interesting thing i actually
want to ask you sorry i'm asking a
million questions
i find that the people you know i've
been talking to people in ukraine and
russia
but in general
i've gotten a chance to talk to people
who've been through trauma in their life
and
there's a humor
they have about
trauma and hard times yeah um it depends
on the culture of course
uh certainly russian speaking folk
i mean
the more suffering you've experienced
for some reason the more they joke about
it it's almost like
they're able to see something deep about
humanity now that they have suffered and
they're able to laugh at the absurdity
the injustice of it all
and you know you could also say it's a
way for them to deal with it but that
that humor has a kind of profound
like um
understanding within it
about what it means to be human that i
just and and then you to really
understand it you have to know the
language so
i guess i'm asking
were you able to really feel
the humans on the other side of the
language i'd like to think so i mean i
mean as you noted you know there there
are universals in life that that
transcend language right i mean
suffering is suffering
love is love compassion
doesn't take place only through language
right it's through actions and so
was there a language prayer absolutely
right did we try to bridge that through
through other means in in in sort of
universal emotions and experiences
absolutely that's one of the things i
always think about
when i'm filming is is how do we distill
down to universals
right um through through imagery right
through um through the vocabulary of
cinema right because i believe so deeply
that
that vocabulary should be visual right
so the words what's the most powerful
way to express the universal is it
visual or is it
language words
i think it's visual
and we're talking about the human face
or human face human body everything
through actions as well actions the
dynamic i'm thinking about a woman named
salha in the film who isn't named
but she's
you see her multiple times
throughout the film and she's basically
the matron of the ward in this house and
she she's the gatekeeper for the ward so
no one enters that ward without her
she's literally the gatekeeper at the
door so no one comes in unless salha
allows them to come in right but then
she also is sort of like
the the first point of contact for
compassion in the ward so when when
mothers and families are admitted
she
forms relationships
between the moms and the grandmothers
for example who are admitted and who are
living there on the ward and she does it
through hugging
right she does it through
bringing them food
right and she forms these really rather
quickly deep relationships um of
compassion with the families
and so
it's amazing to watch and no language is
needed right to bear witness to this
and and she also suffers because of that
right and so at the near the end of the
film if you recall
um
when when another child dies and the
mother is wailing we actually cut away
to salha who's in the hallway who walks
into another room and begins sobbing
she's not a family member
but she has a deep relationship with
that family that she forged as soon as
they stepped into the ward so that's
universal right to see
a woman
weep
because a child has died even if they're
not related to that that's a universal
sort of emotional experience we can all
relate to so that's what i mean by a
visual vocabulary and it's especially
powerful because she has seen much of
this kind of suffering and she's still
maybe she has built up some callous to
be able to
work day to day but it's still
there's still an ocean underneath the
ice she's kept her heart open despite
all the pain that she sees and feels
every day somehow
she's a human being who's able to do
that which is a very difficult thing to
do right she still allows herself to be
vulnerable
um and maybe that's why she can do what
she does
what lessons do you draw from other
famines in history so
uh for me personally one that touched my
family
and one of the great families in
history's uh in ukraine holly moore in
the 30s
32 33 right
with stalin maybe you could speak to the
universals of the suffering here
what lessons do you draw
from those other famines if you've
looked at them
or in general about famine that are
manufactured by the decisions of let's
say authoritarian leaders
famine doesn't have to exist or the bulk
of fandoms famines on this planet i
believe don't have to exist and and most
of them
uh or at least a good number of them are
manufactured by the leaders um
that choose to use
famine as a weapon right and and
ukraine is
the
one of the obvious examples right now
you know with siege tactics that are
happening in different parts of the
country
and um
you know
we built international humanitarian law
for a reason right many years ago
and it continues to be written to this
day
and it's there
to prevent what's happening in ukraine
right now it's there to prevent what's
been happening in yemen for seven years
and yet there hasn't been any teeth
behind it
and that's what disturbs me
is that
we can see
how these famines are being used as
weapons in war
and yet
we aren't sort of using the levers of
power that exist
um in order to
i think to call out in important and
powerful ways those who are causing them
and to make sure that we hold them
accountable on the global stage now to
some extent that seems to be happening
in ukraine in a way that hasn't happened
for a long time and that that gives me
hope right and yet i don't believe we've
done enough
um and i think the the national
community needs to do far more than we
are both in yemen in ethiopia um and in
ukraine right now
there are certain kinds of things that
captivate
the global attention
and it seems like starvation is not
always one of them
for some reason murder
and destruction
gets people attention more
it's the death of course is easy to
enumerate but it's the suffering that's
the problem yeah
yeah you know when we went to film
hunger ward that was one of the creative
questions that i was really concerned
about because starvation
you know it's not a quick action
right it's a long
slow insidious process right just like
hunger
right and yet
when you're hungry right
um it takes you over
it becomes the most important thing
right it's just absolutely fundamental
to to life it's like drying breath
and so i i really
before i filmed hunger ward i i
struggled to sort of answer
how we could creatively approach that
because you know
someone sitting in a clinic right
starving or being treated for starvation
you know that's a pretty static scene
right
um
and what we found was that because of
the volume of cases and because of the
nature of sort of
how quickly
um
people were coming and going is that it
was more dynamic than we anticipated
and there's something also about
starvation
you get tired
it's almost like uh it's a quiet
suffering
yeah
like uh and by the way there's something
about when i think about dark times i
mean you you you'll hear me chuckle for
example i don't know what that is
that's almost like
it's almost like you you have to kind of
laugh at
uh you can't help but laugh at like
uh the injustice and the cruelty in the
world somehow that helps your mind deal
with it i mean i see this all the time
like when you're struggling you can't
feed your family you lost your home
the last thing you have
is jokes about humor yes humans
it's like
the fucking man fucked me over again and
there's jokes all around that yeah and
and then and then you laugh and you
drink vodka and you play music i don't
know what that is i don't know what that
is it's gallows humor right it's it's
it's a way of
a way of i think simultaneously
acknowledging and allowing yourself to
move forward right beyond the pain and
the suffering
so you mentioned ukraine and you
mentioned putin
uh what are your thoughts
about
the humanitarian crisis and generally
the suffering that's resulting from the
war in ukraine
well first off i think the conflict is
just going to exacerbate you know sort
of
the global challenge we have um
with displacement right my the last
entire trilogy i did was about
displacement
to a great extent due to war
and you know this is a huge displacement
of human beings regardless of the cause
and that is gonna sort of
have a ripple effect um across the globe
for many many years to come regardless
of even if the conflict ended today so
there's that that's gonna set up a whole
nother strain on sort of
the
the global sort of
resources that that come into play to
deal with refugees
you know there were 79 million
displaced people on this globe prior to
the ukrainian conflict right
you probably know the numbers better
than i do in terms of what the current
estimates are for displacement from
ukraine four to six million so what are
we up to now 73 74 million individuals
on this planet now who
are displaced that's a significant bump
i wish that the levers of power
were used differently in situations like
ukraine and syria for example like so in
what are the levers of power
well military might let's take that for
one
right so
um
i i
have always felt after working in syrian
turkey that
we completely missed our opportunity as
as a player on the global stage with
military capability
to
prevent
the killing of hundreds of thousands of
civilians in syria
we had the ability and we didn't we
didn't leverage that ability you know
the fact that i i talked with so many
syrians during the course of doing that
project who told me their stories of
living in their house
right
and having
a syrian helicopter fly over their house
and drop a 55-gallon drum
full of explosives and shrapnel
on
in their neighborhood
over
and over and over again
not focused on any so you know military
targets
only meant to kill and so fear right
and early in the conflict we could have
stopped that
right before russia got involved we
could have intervened and created a
no-fly zone that we the united states we
the united states or coalition that we
were a part of yeah and we didn't do it
and we could have and i think that's an
example where we have the military
capability to actually do good in a
situation like that and we don't usually
use it for those purposes and that i
think that's what a military ought to be
used for beyond just defending our
borders is to is to
save others with the privilege that that
power affords what do you think about
the power of the military versus the
power of sanctions versus the power of
conversation
they're all different tools right to be
used at different moments but if if
words
fail
if sanctions fail
right i think there are moments in
history where power is justified right
and i think syria was one of them i
think when barrow bombs were dr were you
know dropping on civilian neighborhoods
for months and months and months with
no
intent to do anything other than kill
syrian civilians that's an instance
i think where might is justified to
shoot those helicopters out of the sky
here's the difficult thing we've talked
about yemen where's the line
between good and evil
for us intervention
in different countries
and conflicts in the world
it's easy to look back 10 20 30 years to
know what was and wasn't a quote unquote
just war
in the moment how do we know
i think it's incredibly difficult to
answer that right and i think
that's why leaders make the wrong
choices so often right is they second
guess themselves
um
i i think you take all the data at your
fingertips all the intelligence that you
have right and you look at it all very
carefully and you make a decision right
there are some instances though
where it's very clear what's happening
right and leaders still don't act right
in yemen right now for example
it's very clear what's happening right
children are being starved because of a
blockade
all the us would have to do is ensure
that blockade
now there's a two-month ceasefire in
place now but remains
lifted beyond the ceasefire and children
will stop starving
that's pretty simple you can trace it's
a direct connection
and we haven't had the sort of the moral
wherewithal to make that decision
because we're too
too interested in maintaining positive
ties with saudi arabia where oil flows
from and so much influence
um
because saudi arabia has so much
influence throughout the mena region um
we want to keep that relationship tight
despite sort of the the moral wounds
that that come from that
about half the world is under
authoritarian regimes
everybody operates under narratives and
there's a narrative in the united states
that freedom is good yeah democracy is
good
i
have fallen victim to this narrative i
believe in it
um i'm saying this jokingly but not
really
because who knows the truth of anything
in this world
uh i eat meat
factory farm meat
and i seem to not be
intellectually philosophically tortured
by this and i should be there's a lot of
suffering there
what do we do
to lessen the suffering of the people
under authoritarian regimes
again the same question
military conflict
diplomacy sanctions all those kinds of
things
uh
is does that
lessen suffering or increase the
suffering
from what you see in yemen
is it is it something that has to be
healed across generations or can be
healed on a scale of months and years
i'm just a guy with camera yeah lex you
know but as a guy with a camera
i've seen
uh a lot a lot of things in a lot of
places
and um
and i've seen the effects these
decisions made by authoritarian leaders
have
on their own citizens
and that's what drives my thinking on
this
um
and and that's what drives and motivates
me each day
to raise the red flag through my films
and say
listen
biden
you
um campaigned for president
in part on a platform that said
that we would regain
our prominence on the moral stage of the
world right and that we would prioritize
right
um
sort of a moral paradigm
over
relationships with authoritarian regimes
saudi arabia being one right and yet
when the cia report came out that
clearly articulated in detail that mbs
was responsible for khashoggi's murder
and for cutting his body into pieces and
probably burning in the backyard of the
of the embassy
um what did biden do
he didn't really make a pariah out of
mbs like he said he was going to right
what if he'd done something else and
actually done what he said he was going
to do which was making viet what if he
had
would remove the ability for mbs to fly
to the united states for example now
that's a sanction right that's a
sanction that's individual
and concrete and would be hugely
embarrassing for mbs that would have
been biden saying
this is unacceptable behavior
right this is something which because
you
executed such a horrendous act
on someone living in the united states
right
we are not going to um
give you a stage here at least right
within the borders of our country
those are the things that leaders can do
that i don't think they do often enough
and certainly our leader right now isn't
doing it in the way i wish you were he
certainly has taken a different stand on
ukraine um
you know and been very vocal but there's
so many instances we could talk about
where i feel like um the the political
gamemanship right often falls into
maintaining relationships like with mbs
and saudi arabia rather than doing the
right thing rather than then as a nation
a leader of a nation saying this is
unacceptable we have a higher standard
than this because i think
when leaders do that
it becomes aspirational right it becomes
aspirational for other leaders um
uh in the progressive world at least and
also it rings the alarm bells for
other authoritarian leaders and says you
know what there are lines right there
are things that can't be done or there
will be significant consequences like
you will not be able to fly into our
airspace anymore um and sanctions i
think need to be concrete and individual
to some in addition to the sort of the
larger scope
but when they're concrete and individual
uh i think often they're felt in a
different way
you mean felt obviously by the
individuals and so the
the ripple effects of that
uh it
might have um
the power to steer the direction of
nations because of the nature of
authoritarian regimes yes right there
there are individuals have so much power
exactly right so you know um you know if
putin is is you know put on trial in the
hague at some point or at least there's
the threat of that right now that's
likely never to happen of course because
someone has to be in custody to go on
trial right and he's never gonna allow
that to happen but
but just knowing that
that's an you know that danger exists
is going to change his travel plans in
the future right um mbs not being able
to fly to the u.s he's going to feel
that and be embarrassed by that
so i think they have a special
meaning and consequence in authoritarian
regimes because of that
so you said you're just a guy with a
camera yeah
i would say you're
a brilliant
guy with the camera i'm also a kind of
guy with the camera you got a couple
cameras a couple cameras i have a couple
mic
you got a couple mice a couple cameras
uh robot over here when you can't when
you can't beat them with quality you
bring the quantity
that's right um so to me that's also an
interest
partially because i also speak uh
russian yeah uh and a bit ukrainian
i want to study that part of the world i
want to talk to a lot of people i want
to talk to the leaders i want to talk to
regular people to be honest and i'd love
to
get your comments on this the regular
quote-unquote people
are way more fascinating to me
as a filmmaker
how do you figure out how to tell this
story
i'm sure a guy with a camera you're
looking at war in ukraine but also
what's going on in yemen in syria and
other places in the world i mentioned
north korea that's a super interesting
one
hard to bring cameras along china
you know uh like in canada the truckers
there's all kinds of fascinating things
happening in the world yeah so you as a
as a scholar of human suffering and
human flourishing
um how do you choose how to tell the
story
how do i choose a story how do i choose
i assume those are coupled
uh
so how do you choose which story to tell
yeah and how do you choose how to tell
that story yeah
well in terms of how to how to choose
which story um
you know it's it's a bit of a mystery
potion for me frankly um
i i go often on instinct but there's
also a highly intentional piece of it
for me as well and the intentional piece
is
i guess i'd call it the do i care
threshold you know or the so what
threshold you personally just
something in your heart just kind of
gets
excited or hurt or just feels something
so one of the things that disturbs me
about american culture lex is is that
you know we seem to be a people that's
fascinated by reality television for
example like like look at
how many of us here in america
watch reality television right
that deeply disturbs me not that i've
never watched an episode i've shot a
whole season of it once to make a living
right so it's like i i know it right
but
i feel like the things we should be
paying attention to
are the things
personally are the things i choose to
film
right
as a human being
as a dad
as a filmmaker
i think we should be paying attention
to the fact that children are being
starved in yemen i think we should be
paying attention to the fact that
ukrainians are being displaced by the
millions so there's this so what
threshold that i use and i feel like it
has to be a topic that if we don't cover
and we don't put out in the world
in the largest possible way in the hope
of intervening in the hope of marshaling
maximum resources and attention to
solving the problem
that's what i'm dedicated to as a
filmmaker
because i didn't pick up a camera
initially
to
film puppy dogs right to make people
smile
i believe the camera is a tool for
change i believe the camera
is a powerful tool that we can use
to raise awareness and martial resources
and help people understand the impact
that these geopolitical decisions have
on real people's lives and that's the
that that's the intent
i create each film with
now how i choose each story that's the
the magic potion piece of it right and
and um often one flows rather
organically into another frankly
so you just kind of like you said you go
with instinct a little bit to some
extent but oftentimes i choose the next
project based on relationships i've
developed yeah in the last film
right
and so one often flows into another
through relationships i develop and then
a colleague will share a detail about
something that's happening in a certain
place
and i'll go hmm
really i didn't know that right and it
usually it's before it's hit the world
stage in a big way and so i start to do
due diligence and often that it reveals
it to be a much bigger and more pressing
topic that um that i want to learn more
about
before i talk to you about syria
and
lifeboat
you mentioned a camera is the best
weapon
maybe just well you can't take out a
tank
right but it's a good second
top top three yeah i love the humor
throughout this i really i really
appreciate it it's making
we're talking about such dark topics
it resets the mind in a way that allows
me to think so thank you
as a
as as a filmmaker
i almost want to talk about
the technical details
how do you
choose to shoot stuff
again so maybe you can explain to me
i work with incredible folks
that care about
lenses and equipment
and so on
i tend to be somebody um
that just wants to kind of
go as like a gorilla shooting
like a um not not plan too much just go
with
uh gritty i'm trying to come up with
words that sound positive
do a positive spin on what i try to do
but like gritty
don't over plan
uh use like we had a big discussion if
you see this light yeah um it's it's on
a stand that's a very ghetto stand yeah
you need a sandbag on that man exactly
so no no see
no sandbag and and like the the stand is
actually bending under the weight of
that thing it could fall on us it could
fall it probably won't reach us but it
could but the danger
live under that danger embrace that
danger
love it yeah
because that thing is easier to
transport than a heavier one yeah
sandbag that's extra weight so if you
keep like uh p people tell me there's
the right way to do stuff like here's
these giant cases with all kinds of
padding for transporting stuff i
transport most of the equipment in a
garbage bag yeah so i i that's just a
preference because that's somehow
that chaos allows me to sit to ignore
all the stupidity of uh loving the
equipment and focusing on the story so
that said i've never shot anything
like worthwhile
like
uh there is power to the visual yeah
yeah like definitely and so
finding a certain angle a certain light
whether it's natural light or additional
artificial lighting
just capturing a tear capturing
when the person forgets themselves for a
moment
and looks out into the distance missing
somebody thinking about somebody
all of those like moments you can
capture
a lens a camera can do magic with that
um i don't even know the question i'm
asking you but how
do
both technical and philosophical how do
you capture the visual power that you're
after
yeah
so so many of my films
i think
are built on the premise of access
right build on this notion that um
the
the biggest hurdle
to the story is getting there
being there in the room or being there
on the boat
while a crisis is unfolding
and that access typically is really
nuanced and difficult to gain
and and then trust flows from that right
because usually it takes a long time to
gain that access
because that access is so hard fought
it necessarily informs
how we film
right
to be in a room at sadaka hospital in
southern yemen i can't have five people
in that room
right i can't have a boom mic
over a scene
i want
creatively the opposite of that as well
so it's not just a logistical question
it's also a creative question
to capture intimate moments where
families are dealing with suffering
children and dying children and and
caretaking is is active and ongoing all
the time
you don't want to interrupt that moment
and so that informs how i do things so
we go fleet and nimble and small
those are all really good words for
but but but so it's logistical on the
one hand but it's also a creative choice
right so when we filmed hunger ward
two people were filming the entire film
right me and my director of photography
that was the two people in the room two
people in the room
yeah wow that's it the whole film right
we had a field producer as well and he's
part of the country but in terms of cam
it's just two people and we're doing
everything and we have lenses
um
that you know are long enough that we
don't have to move to capture the film
so we can tuck into a corner sometimes
right
and so just what's long mean that means
they're standing farther away and they
can zoom lens it's not a prime lens so
it's not a fixed focal length right
because a fixed focal length you have to
move a lot more in order to capture
action with with a zoom lens um you know
maybe a 105 at the long end you know i
can tuck into a corner and just film
from 15 feet away instead of having to
get right up on someone right so you
you're less likely to interrupt the
scene
and and you can kind of become the fly
on the wall sometimes
so so you know i'm very intentional
about that piece of it so that we can we
can capture those vulnerable moments and
not interrupt them
that's really fascinating too
because the access
i don't often think about this but
that's probably true for me as well
um
part of the storytelling
is to be in the room and that's the hard
part yeah for me most of my films that's
the hardest part actually as hard as
hunger award and lifeboat were to film
and 50 feet from syria
the getting their piece of it for the
last two was much harder yeah and it's
also it's a it's a creative act
it's it's like i don't know if it is for
you but it's the kind of people you talk
to
it's uh
it's like how you live your life like
the kind of people i talk to right now
they steer the direction of my life and
steer the direction of things that i'll
film
so like it's not just like you're trying
to get access it's like
it's everything it's like it builds
it builds and builds and builds and
builds on itself yeah yeah
i mean part of the thing even saying you
know talking about some of these leaders
and conversations with them
it's almost like
staring your life into the direction of
the difficult
of like
taking the leap
and
uh if you're a