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 good human being
and a lot of people
know who you are as a human like not not
as a name but as really who you are yeah
that like putting that attention out
there it's somehow the world
opens doors where
the access becomes
the access that was once seemed
impossible
becomes possible and then all of that is
a creative journey to be in the room i
think that probably is i mean it's true
even for fiction films probably
is like
everything that led to that like uh to
be in the room the journey to be in the
room and to shoot the scene
is maybe more important than the scene
itself
and like really focus on the creative
act of that yeah that's really
fascinating and especially i mean with a
documentary you get one take
yeah you can't say hey we reset right
yeah yeah exactly ah that is so
interesting as you were in some of the
most difficult
parts of the world
in the room with some of the most
difficult stories to be told
and yet
i think that's why i keep doing these
stories right because
it's it's once you have that lived
experience for me
um
it's moving
it it moves me
to bear witness
to these
um
these these inspiring people under
difficult circumstances
and and it you know i can't come back to
the us afterwards
and you know
walk down the grocery aisle where
there's
50 different choices for canned peas
right and not
sort of
feel that lived tension right that live
tension of the privilege
that i have here in the u.s and then i
have a choice about what to do with that
privilege right and the last thing i
want to do
is start
you know
doing stories about dandelions right
there's far more important things to do
on this very limited time that i have on
the planet and
you know i think that that um
that's catalytic for me like
i
feel that mortality each day
and my goal is to
is to tell as many of these stories
um
before i'm gone
could you speak to
the getting access
is this just
you know is there interesting stories of
how
um
a weird or funny
or profound ways that led you to get
access to a room each one is a different
adventure and it's just an adventure
everyone's an adventure yeah though
probably one of the easiest ones i ever
had in the recent past was for 50 feet
from syria where
um
you know i literally broke my hand in a
bicycle race and after many months of
trying to get um
an appointment with an orthopedic hand
surgeon you know a specialist i finally
did and he was syrian american and
the syrian conflict had just begun and
we started talking about it
and yeah um after you know he looked at
my hand in the first five minutes he's
like yeah you need surgery right now
great but then somehow we started
talking about syria
and like five minutes in he just stood
up and like put the privacy curtain
around us supposed to be a 15 minute
appointment or so and we talk for an
hour
right so you know those moments of sort
of mysterious confluence happen right
and i think you have to be open to them
when they do happen because i'm a
storyteller i'm always looking as well
right so so because
he then contacted me later and said sky
i am going back to the syrian border to
volunteer as a surgeon do you want to
come with me that was an easy one that's
probably the easiest one i could give
you but it came out of this interesting
moment very personal moment right
lifeboat and hunger ward were completely
different
um
and i had to really work hard to gain
access to those stories so you
intentionally thought like what
uh i want to get access to the story
yeah and then what are the different
ideas and they often might involve
a doctor or a dentist or
just be being maybe intentionally and
aggressively open
to experiences that lead you into the
room
so be like uh it is it's funny you
mentioned the doctor because i have
similar experiences now
i've just gotten
access to all kinds of fascinating
people yeah in the same in the same way
you're all around us they're all they're
all around us you just have to look yeah
exactly it's like there's fascinating
people everywhere who are doing
incredible things yeah but we have to be
open and keep our eyes open and realize
that there are amazing human beings
everywhere yeah there's networks that
connect people
just through life you meet people
you share a beer or a drink or just you
fall in love
or you
um or you should share trauma together
you go through a hard time together
those little sticky things connects us
humans and if you just keep yourself
open and um embrace the curiosity and
then also the persistence i suppose like
if you
like how long does
have you chased access
does it take
days weeks months years lex i'm not
the most talented filmmaker in the world
i'm not the smartest guy in the world
i think if there's there's qualities
that have served me well in my career
it's persistence and tenacity right i'm
always been sort of a slow burn
human being like i i i i would never hit
a home run but i
hit a first right a single to first and
then i'd hit another single to first and
then so you know i ran a marathon when i
was 18 and i think that is illustrative
of sort of how my career has been yeah i
i just keep going and and i believe in
this notion of incremental evolution
that with each project
i try to learn from it and take away
lessons learned
and improve my craft right and improve
how i how i leverage that craft and
improve how i tell the story from a
narrative standpoint each time
so that
on the next project it's a little bit
better
and that's the arc of my career is
learning learning evolving evolving
so that i can i can make a little better
film the next time how do you gain
people's trust
like for example there's a line between
journalists and documentary filmmakers
nobody really trusts journalists
but a documentary filmmaker
of course i'm
joking half joking i don't know which
percent is joking but some truth but
documented filmmaker is a kind of
storyteller an artist yeah and somehow
that's more trustworthy because you're
on the same side
in some way i don't maybe maybe maybe
the same side yeah maybe
is there something to be said how you
gain the trust of people to gain access
you just are you just try to be a good
human being
um is there something to be said there
well so i do draw a distinction between
journalism and filmmaking because i
think you're right they're different
and there are some filmmakers who do hue
to
um sort of the journalistic tenets of
who what where where and why fair and
balanced on both sides right make sure
everyone has a voice i don't if you say
fair and balanced you're rarely either
fair or balanced yeah i've seen that
with journalists journalists often
unfortunately in my perspective sorry to
interrupt you rudely and go on a rant
but they want to do it
they seem to have an agenda yeah as
opposed to seeking to truly tell a story
or to truly understand
especially when they're talking to
people
uh
who have some degree of evil in them
well we all have an agenda right i think
in anything we do whether it's like
um
to seek truth or you know some some
larger principle sure um
i i always have an agenda um like i
chose to work with civilians and and
caretakers in yemen on hunger ward
rather than to go interview mbs right
um that's what i'm interested in is
bringing that to the world right
um
but in terms of in terms of building
relationships and trust
it's it's really
i think about transparency as much as
anything else and going in in a
collaborative sense
so i don't
i don't i don't think of
of the people that i film with as
subjects for example i think of them as
collaborators so it's a different
mindset that i go into projects with and
that's beautiful and it's based on
relationships right you have to build
relationships with other human beings
however you can and that takes time
um and it takes listening
and it's active
so it's it's i've talked about the
notion of consent before which which you
know is so important in non-fiction film
and
you know i hew to this idea that um
you know you don't just slide a piece of
paper in from someone a release form and
have them sign it right and then you're
done you know that's not the nature of
true consent in my mind
it's you have to you have to work on a
foundation of active consent
every single day that you're working
with someone and that's based on
relationship right and it's based on
dialogue so so it's trust that i'm
always aiming for it's it's the building
of relationships which i'm only aiming
for which is why you know yesterday i
got um a bunch of photos from dr
al-sadiq in the south of yemen and she
sends me photos all the time of the
children that she's currently treating
because we have an active relationship
that's continues on and probably will
for many years to come you know so that
it's it's it's it's going to continue
and that's the only way that i can do
these kinds of films let me ask you
about
silly little details
of filming before before we go to the
big
big picture stories
um cameras lenses yeah do those how much
do those matter you mentioned director
of photography what what's your
how much do you love
the the feel
the smell of equipment that does the
visual filming you know there's some
people they're just
like ah
they they they love lenses
how much do you love that and or versus
how much do you focus on the story or
access and all this kind of stuff i'm
not a tech geek
um but because
during the bulk of my career i um
i've worked as a director of photography
myself for other people
in order to pay the bills over the years
um you know i know the technical side of
it because i i've had to know it and
i've had to train myself and learn it so
i see them as necessary tools
and
again because i believe
you know film and cinema ish is and
should be visually driven and not
verbally driven um i want the best tools
possible
within my means right and within the the
logistical
ability of the project because we have
to go so small right i can't
i can't afford nor can i bring a huge
hundred thousand dollar lens so if i
give you a trillion dollars a trillion
dollars yeah wow
unlimited yes there's still huge
constraints that have nothing to do with
money yeah like you just said yeah
so what
what cameras would you use you know what
i do with the trillion dollars
i could do a lot of things
you're only allowed to fund the film and
no corrupt stuff where you like
use the film to actually help children
no you're not allowed to do any of that
what i would do with the children is i
wouldn't invest in a well i guess i
would invest in chrome i would i would
increase capacity
to do more films what i would do so i
would buy basically the perfect little
you know
mini equipment set right but then i
would train
three teams maybe to do the same thing
that i've been doing so we could
multiply and scale up more and more
stories yeah that's what i would do with
them but the actual setup
would remain small
and nimble yeah
and uh what about
lighting do you usually use natural
light do you ever do
i mean sorry for the technical questions
here but
um
highlighting the drama of the human face
yeah
uh
that's the visual that's art that's like
to reveal reality yeah
at its deepest is art and uh do you use
lighting lighting's such a big part of
that you use do you ever do artificial
lighting do you try to do natural always
you know the best lighting instrument in
the world is the sun
at the right moment of the day
and so i predominantly use natural light
um
at certain moments
and just shape natural light
during the course of these small human
right stocks that's not to say we don't
bring instruments sometimes but when we
do
they're very small and again
compact so
for example i have this small little um
tube kit that's just three instruments
right that you can charge with the usb
because electricity is often a major
issue where we go so there's just three
little tube lights with magnetic backs
that if we find in a situation where you
know we can't get enough exposure for a
hallway or something and we have the
time to throw it up we'll throw it up if
people are walking if if collaborators
are walking down that hallway a lot for
example at night just so we can see them
right so it's instances like that or
if we do do an interview which
we don't do very often but if we do just
so we have a key light on the face
right
and i always bring in a reflector or two
you know just to shape natural light as
well in ways but it's um
it's about shaping rather than producing
light for us
got it as we sit surrounded by black
curtains in complete natural life
so just just so you know this room
uh
is is like a violation of the basic
principles of
of using the sun so behind the large
curtains
are giant
windows yeah so this whole should i rip
them open
[Laughter]
how much of the work is done in the edit
that's another question i'm curious
about yeah and how much do you
uh sort of anticipate that
like when you're actually shooting
are you thinking of the final
story as it appears on screen
or are you just collecting as a human
collecting little bits of story here and
there and in the edit is where most of
the storytelling happens i've developed
this sort of
mental paradigm for myself over the
years um
that speaks to that and and i call it
the three creations right and so
when i'm doing a film the first creation
for me is
you know
my preconception or visualization of
what the film is going to be before i
shoot it right so i have this this
entire vision of of what a film is gonna
be
um and and sometimes it could be pretty
specific like i'll i'll think through
the scenes if i if i know the locations
and everything and i'll have this idea
of what i'm going to create right
and then i'm there filming right and
always without fail
reality is something altogether
different
than what i thought it would be but it's
still good to have the original idea
yeah yeah but if i tried to hold to that
original vision right and to create a
film out of that idea
they'd be crap all the films would be so
we i have to adapt i have to evolve my
approach and then embrace what is
actually occurring with the people
actually doing it and then re-envision
so that re-envisioning is very active
during the entire filming process and so
that's the second creation that's the
the rethinking and re-visualizing
based on what we're actually
experiencing and seeing what this film
is going to be
and then
i finish filming right and we bring the
hard drives back and we plug in the hard
drives um in the edit bay
and
oftentimes you know because it's two of
us filming most of the time
i haven't seen all the footage
because in the field it's all about just
filming right and then just transferring
the footage and getting on safely you
know clone to multiple drives i don't
have a chance to review everything i
can't do rushes like you do on a large
feature so because i'm filming half of
it i know what i've filmed right but i
haven't seen everything the director
photography has filmed right so the next
stage for me is reviewing every single
frame of what's been filmed
and that's where discovery happens the
third time right or second time rather
is is wow
now i thought we'd film this
but actually
um there's this over here and then i
have to open up this second vision and
turn in and transform it into a third
vision for the film based on what's
actually on the hard drive so you're is
this like a daily process so what i do
the fruit my process is that
once if it's a really difficult project
i'll take a break before i go through
this yeah just just for healing you know
and some space away and fresh eyes and
usually that's about a month
and then once i re-engage i re-engage
whole hog i re-engage fully and it and i
review every single frame and as i do
that i create a spreadsheet
and for hunger war that spreadsheet was
i don't know 1500 lines long or
something where it's basically log notes
and i and i watch every scene and i take
notes
and i i know really what we have and
once i've gone through that process that
takes about a month and i really know
what we came back with i create an
outline for the film
from that and that's the third visioning
right
that's usually completely different than
my original vision for the film to some
extent right but i have to stay open to
that entire process
um or or i'd be trying to create
something that i can't
really create
so i think that's those are the three
creations for me that's so cool to to
know what we have
uh just to lay it all out
and to load it in into your mind yeah
because like
this is the capture of reality we have
it's a very kind of scientific process
too because um
you know in science you collect a bunch
of data about a phenomena yeah and now
you have to like analyze that data but
now your phenomena is long gone
yeah yeah right right now you just have
the data just the data and you have to
uh write a paper about it like analyze
the data it's the similar things
you have to like load it all in where's
the story
how
how how do you
that last probably profound
piece of
doing the editing like in your mind like
what
uh how to lay those things out well it's
almost like the scientific process right
i have a hypothesis
a creative hypothesis right not a
scientific one yes and but then i'm
testing the hypothesis during the course
of filming right and i have to stay true
to what the data tells me in the end
creatively so it's very similar to the
scientific processes i don't know what
we should
we should probably coin that yeah
creative
scientific process or something like
that
but then you
actually do the edit and you watch
that's also
uh iterative in a sense because maybe
uh when you have a film that's 20 30 40
minutes or if it's feature line
uh
like in it
do you ever have it where it sucks
like it's not is there a stage where it
sucks like a stage where you're right
right it like is where he's like no this
is not
this is not what i was like when it's
all put together in this way this
doesn't this is not working right this
is not right
or do you
is it always like an incremental step
towards better and better it's
incremental yeah it's incremental yeah
and there's always some moment in the
editing process where there's a
breakthrough where suddenly i understand
how it fits together
more fully and you have to be like you
said resilient you have to be patient
that that moment will come yeah exactly
are you ultra self-critical or are you
generally optimistic and
patient
i don't think those are mutually
exclusive
right so you just oscillate or you or
they're like dance partners or something
they're dance partners yeah yeah
definitely dancing all the way through
the process
by way of advice
you know to young filmmakers
how to film something that
is recognized
by the world in some way
i would say you know first off learn
your craft
right um because i i think craft is
incredibly foundational right to
creating
a powerful story
and sorry to interrupt but when you say
craft do you mean just the raw technical
the director of photography like the
filming aspect is it the storytelling is
the acts is the whole thing i think
craft is more than just knowing how to
push record on a camera or what lens to
use right that's part of it right
but i i think um
at least in non-fiction
you know i'm i'm a product
to some extent of
having to know how to do it all
right having to teach myself how to do
it all because i didn't go to film
school you know
but i became so
enamored of telling stories through a
camera what was the leap by the way from
theater to
storyteller oh i just had needed an
extra class in grad school i was in a
mfa directing class and i needed an
extra class and i just sort of like
talked my way into a television
directing class
and
fell in love with it and the actor
became the director yeah yeah
well yeah i mean i wasn't an actor but
but i i had to act i had to know the
craft of acting because i was in the
theater you know today did you love it
though did you love
did you love the theater yeah
um the first yeah the as an
undergraduate yeah but then i learned
pretty quickly that i was pretty bad at
it
um or at least not very good um and that
my skills lay elsewhere uh
in more sort of behind the scenes and
shaping a story when you started
you know taking a class but also telling
stories as a director did you
quickly
realize that you're pretty good at this
or was it a grind
that's a good question max um i think
i definitely knew right away
that it was more my wheelhouse
right and and i think part of that was
because i um
i i grew up in
sort of a world of imagination
um and i think that active imagination
as a child really lent itself well to
the skill set that a director needs
right
to shape story to shape narrative to
shape performances so i think it was a
much more natural fit for me was i
excellent at the beginning heck no no
you know i think few people are
but i learned where was the biggest
struggle for you is it so your
imagination clearly was uh
something that you worked on for a
lifetime so i'm sure that was
pretty strong books came from books
books
but the actual conversion of the amount
you said shape the story
where was the skill most lacking in the
shaping of the story initially technical
side just technically yeah i'd like you
know because i taught myself everything
right what kind of microphone should i
use right what kind of camera what does
this lens do what's that lens do i
didn't know any of that and so i
essentially was i have been self-taught
technically how do you get good
technically would you say when you're
self-taught doing it over and over again
and what kind of stories were you
telling like like i began shooting local
commercials um for for for money for
money yeah yeah actually doing
professional projects yeah yeah and so i
kind of learned on the job as i did it
how many hobby projects did you do just
for the hell of it were you trying to
focus on the professional i was trying
to make money right right out of grad
school just to pay the rent and that
that you know that's a forcing function
to i mean i i personally love having my
back to the wall or financially you're
screwed
to succeed
so that's nice uh i mean i lived out of
the trunk of my car for a couple years
after grad school just freelancing you
know just like but but that couple years
really helped me learn fast because i
had to learn fast you know so i did a
couple
i did a couple voyages around the world
for this group called semester at sea
that has a floating university that
where they go out three and a half
months at a time with the with about 500
college level students and about 35
professors and so you're shooting every
day for three and a half months in like
nine different countries and so
that really was like instrumental to me
becoming a pretty good camera person
pretty quickly and you're doing most of
the work yourself one man one man bad
yeah the second the second uh voyage i
at least had an editor with me yeah but
i was shooting everything yeah what's
the perfect team is it two people
for the for non-fiction
asking for a friend yeah i'm kind of
interested in some storytelling not of
the level
and the sophistication that you're doing
but more i think you have to allow the
story to dictate what the size of the
film should be for these small human
rights dogs i do i think two or three
you know it means you work your butt off
right because you're doing everything
right but it allows you to tell intimate
stories and have that access i i'm doing
a film this summer that's a that's a
scripted piece where we'll probably have
25 crew people oh wow you know so it's a
completely different different endeavor
altogether but doing it yourself
what do you think about that
even though you i you have that trillion
dollars
oh i have that trillion dollars against
write that check before i leave yeah i
will okay great uh
i've never seen a check for that because
it'll be interesting how many zeros is
that i write them so often i
i've lost track
or the united states government sure as
heck writes them often okay anyway um i
mean like is there an argument can you
steal man the case for a single person
you know not for me um not for me
and and here's why
um
what i found
is that
um
by by being a team of two filming with a
field producer but two people filming
um
it allows
us to double our footage
first off right so we have twice as much
footage in the time we're filming to
come back with as opposed to one person
filming so you're each
manning a camera yeah constantly
and how much how much uh sorry do you
keep interrupting how much interaction
interplay there
sometimes the director of photography is
in another room
filming a different scene if it makes
sense sometimes we're cross-shooting in
the same room yeah right it just depends
on the needs of the moment um so so we
come back with double footage it's one
thing but as a director so that's you
know and given how access is some
sometimes shaped by the events so that
we can only something you know
in lifeboat for example you know a
rescue operation may only happen three
three days right so you want as much
footage as you can but the other piece
of it that's really critical for me i
found is that by having another human
being i'm filming with who i'm
co-shooting with it frees me up as a
director to not always have to be
shooting either i can do all the other
work to build relationships right to
have side conversations with people
to
to sort out the right way to tell a
story right or to transfer footage
knowing that the director of photography
is still filming during all that so it
frees me up to think of a as a director
rather than just an image
acquirer yeah because there's also i
don't know how distracting is you've
obviously done it for years but setting
stuff up
it uh
pre-act it it
preoccupies your mind like pressing the
record button yeah and like framing
stuff and all that that's still that
takes up some part of your mind where
you can't think
freely that's my choice right that's how
i work best that said the caveat there
would be that's not the only way to do
it obviously right like one of my
favorite documentary time documentaries
of all time
um is a documentary called a woman
captured shot in hungary
uh by a single filmmaker with a single
camera with a single lens right
and it's brilliant and powerful and
moving
and
interventional
it's it's incredible filmmaking and it
was a single human being who created
that film with with um with a
collaborator or subject so it can be
done it's just not how i work best yeah
how much personally with the other
person
how important is the relationship with
them
outside of the filming like uh with the
director of photography the director
photographers say like
how much
drinking and if you don't drink whatever
the equivalent of that is do you have to
do together
how much soul-searching or is it more
like two surgeons getting together is it
is it surgeons or is it a jazz band well
it could be either right hopefully not
the same time though because i don't
think surgeons and jesus fans go well
together
probably they're
they're both good with fingers
exactly but i'd rather maybe not play in
jazz while they operate on me yeah um
but but i think um
for me um i think there are moments of
both but usually not at the same time
right there are surgical moments where
the moment is so pressing you really
have to be
that task driven right to capture as
thoroughly as possible whatever's
unfolding right
but i think there's other times where
you do improvise like jazz right and
where where you have a lot of choices
ahead of you and and you're doing it
maybe a dance with the other camera
person right in order to capture a scene
as creatively and fully as possible
during a fixed duration
how much you said shaping because it is
non-fiction
but i feel like there's so many ways to
tell the same non-fiction that it's
borderline on fiction
yeah this is well
it's storytelling
and
how much shaping
do you see yourself as as doing
like how important is your role how you
tell the story
um
i suppose the question i'm asking is how
many ways can you really screw this up
every day you can screw it up
um i mean that's really the
what i think what you ask your basically
the ethos of documentary filmmaking
right i allow a lot of things to guide
my choices um
one of them being
am i being fair
right not balanced right but i am i
being fair to what i'm witnessing does
the camera capturing in a fair way the
truth
of the reality some some fundamentals
and it also speaks to consent right um
am i being fair in a sense of con do i
have active consent in this moment right
regardless of whether i have a signed
piece of paper i always find some way to
document it whether it's just direct
address to camera or you know
um a translated release so there's
actually that's an interesting little so
they say something to the camera that
they consent or they sign the thing yeah
so for example you know i think the
large you know broadcast companies have
this formalized process where they
present a piece of paper
right yes and
the subject reads it and they sign it
and then you have permission and that's
irrevocable right so it'll hold up in
court
that's not how i operate right and so
um
it's it's just
for example that doesn't work if
someone's illiterate and can't read that
piece of paper right right what if they
don't know how to sign their name right
so instead you have to have a
conversation
ask questions have them ask questions
come to a complete understanding before
you even know whether they understand
what you're asking right and then in
that case if someone's illiterate then
you have that conversation you sit down
and it takes a long time sometimes but
you have to do it and then if they still
want to participate and they give you
their consent you know they can't sign a
piece of paper right so then you just do
in their native language right direct
consent to camera in their language
interesting but also you're speaking to
the consent that's
just a human placing trust in you yeah
you make a connection like this that's
the most important concern right yeah i
hate papers
i hate papers
and lawyers
because they they exactly for that
reason yeah okay great but
you should be focusing on on the human
connection that leads to the trust to
the like real consent and consent
day-to-day minute to minute because that
can change absolutely and it does change
you mentioned uh a woman captured what
the this is
i'm sure you can't answer that but i
will force you uh what are the top three
documentaries of all time
short or feature length
to you not this is not your opinion this
is objective truth
uh maybe top one
what's what's the greatest we got
um
let's see much of the penguins that's
probably number one for me really no i'm
just kidding i don't know i i do seem to
the the metaphor of penguins
huddling together
in
uh hard cold
like in the harsh conditions of nature
that that's something that's kind of
beautiful yeah i don't
love all nature documentaries but like
something about march of the penguins i
i think morgan freeman yeah he narrated
it narrates it so maybe everything just
everything you documented with morgan
freeman i'm a sucker for that
uh warner herzog
life in the taiga the simple people i
love grizzly man
i love
that's one of his best works you know
yes i think that's uh joe rogan's
favorite uh uh favorite documentary
yeah it's both comedy and and i mean
it's tragic comedy tragic comedy yeah
yeah is there something that stands out
to you i mean i'm joking about like best
something that was impactful to you just
to put it out there i don't think
there's any
any way to say that they're objectively
you know the best fee documentaries all
the time but for me and you may find
this interesting given your background
is that
i think
my top three
are all
from
the eastern bloc actually so
so aquarella
by kosokovsky victor kosovki is one of
my favorite and it's a couple years old
now
which is sort of a meditation on the
place water has
on our planet and in our lives
um
i i think
a woman captured that i mentioned which
was shot in hungary there's a
feature-length one
both both are feature links yeah um it
is just brilliant and it i think has yet
to find distribution here in the u.s you
know but it's the perfect example of
what they call you know verite
or direct
non-fiction filmmaking a european woman
this is the synopsis the european woman
has been kept by family as a domestic
slave for 10 years
drawing courage from the filmmaker's
presence
she decides to escape the unbearable
oppression
and become a free person wow
so the filmmaker
is part of the story part of the story
becomes didn't start that way but during
the course of the story the filmmaker
under becomes comes to understand that
this is actually modern day slavery and
rather than just allow it to be
actually enables and assists this woman
to to free yourself from slavery and
become a free woman i wonder sorry on a
small tangent before we get to number
three like icarus is interesting too
how often
do you become part of the story
or the story is different
because of your presence
but like uh like you
you changed the tide of history yeah
well back to like one person at a time
that we keep talking you know we keep
coming back to that theme on some level
so so this could tie in interesting to
one of my one of my favorite films
actually so
um
the last two films that i would mention
from my top four list would be the third
eastern block one would be a film called
immortal in 2019. which was shot in
russia by a russian woman
um that sort of you know examines uh the
place of the state
in um
in shaping individuals to be vehicles
for the state i mean that's my own
synopsis but that's one of my takeaways
from the brilliant 60-minute dock or so
um again russian filmmaking is really
quite
quite good and powerful the fourth one
would be a frederick wiseman film titica
follies
um which was filmed in the u.s decades
ago
uh
inside basically the bowels of an insane
asylum or a mental health institution
and and i bring up wiseman because you
know he is really
the the godfather so to speak of of
direct cinema or cinema verite
and
i when early in my career i really
believed in what he expressed as the
place of the verite filmmaker which is
simply
fly on the wall
which is only observational nature
right
and and i believe that that's how i
should be
as a non-fiction filmmaker that i was
there only to bear witness to observe
and not to intervene in any way shape or
form
and and that was the
sort of foundation for how i operated
for many many years
and then some things happened
so one of those things that happened
was
i i filmed lifeboat
and
during the course of filming lifeboat
which you know covered rescue operations
in the mediterranean off the coast of
libya
in the first three days
of that
rescue mission
um
you know we came upon over 3 000 people
asylum seekers floating in flimsy rafts
in the water
and we were on the zodiacs and um we
were filming
and
within the first couple hours you know
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
some of them couldn't swim
and so we found ourselves in this moment
where we had a choice we could film
someone drowned in front of us or we
could put our cameras down and pull them
out of the water
and so that's what we did
we put our cameras in the bottom of the
zodiac and just started pulling people
out of the water
and um
you know if i was wise men right
according to his
paradigm then we should have just filmed
and
um i didn't anticipate that moment
beforehand
i had no sort of foreknowledge that i
was going to find myself faced with that
dilemma of the moment as a documentarian
but there was no question in my mind
that i had to put my camera down and
pull that fellow human being out of the
water and i don't regret it at all so
i've come to a different place i've
evolved to what i believe for the kind
of film that i do
is more appropriate right like i can go
to sleep at night
knowing that
regardless of how the film would have
been different if i hadn't made that
choice
i made the right choice as a human being
so i i think of it as being a human
being first in a filmmaker second in
moments like that
that's beautifully beautifully put but i
also think like
you could be a human being in small ways
too like silly ways and put a little bit
of yourself in in documentaries i i tend
to see that as really beautiful
like when like the meta piece of it like
yeah like yeah just just put yourself
into the into the movie a little bit
because uh like break that
third fourth whatever the wall is
is realize that there's a human behind
the camera too for some reason me as a
fan as a viewer
that's enjoyable too i think there's a
real authenticity there
behind the straw especially with these
hard stories that you're doing that
there's a human being struggling to
like uh
observing the suffering
and having to
bear the burden
that this kind of suffering exists in
the world and you're behind that camera
living that struggle
and there's small ways to show yourself
in that way
as you know i i don't do that in a big
way but you know i actually there are
subtle moments where i allow
that presence to live just for a second
like
i hate belly button docs that's what i
call them i don't know what it's about
belly button doc is
navel gazing right where
this is sort of a narcissistic
filmmaking where someone just
studies their own place in the world
right i think i see yeah yeah i think my
you know or
i i'm more concerned with
how i can intervene right yeah um well
you're trying to really deeply empathize
yeah so like if you do emphasize
i don't want to center myself in these
stories it's not about me right i am so
unimportant
what is important is what's happening
what's unfolding in the world that we
need to act upon and right and i think
it's selfish and narcissistic to to
you know push myself into these stories
unnecessarily now that said i think
there is some small value in what you're
saying just to remind viewers
that there's obviously a filmmaker at
play so sometimes the way that i do that
is just like through a question on
camera i'd allow the audio to live
of a question or during a conversation
i'm having with someone so they can they
can just hear how it's posed for example
right and to me that's enough
yeah i i do like moments
when people
recognize that you exist they they look
at the filmmaker past the camera
and that yes you ask the question in an
interview or something like that and
they respond to that yeah uh like they
respond to this like new perturbation
into their reality that was created by
this other human yeah and i especially
like when those questions are those
perturbations are like a little bit
absurd and like add something very novel
to their situation and that novelty
reveals something about them
so as opposed to capturing the
day-to-day reality of their life you do
that plus
the perturbations of like something
novel yeah that and but of course
there's there's there's all kinds of
ways to do this let me um
what was number five by the way only i
only gave you four get you just stay at
four
there's a short dock i like i mentioned
they're called the toxic pigs of
fukushima
i know i know i apologize
it's dark it's a great title though
right it's a great title
it's it's no one's seen it but it's
great
it's it says what it sounds like yeah
yeah it's exactly what it sounds like
but really brilliantly executed
well let me ask you about lifeboat
because it's extremely
i i don't
um
it's a really moving um
idea just just the fact that this exists
in the world
that there's uh
as a metaphor as a reality
that there is
a set of people trying to flee
desperately is the desperation of it
and now with his refugees the
desperation of that of of trying to
escape
towards a world that
full of mystery uncertainty uh doubt
could be hopeless at times and you're
willing to do a lot
for your own survival of the survival of
your family and all those kinds of
things that's kind of the
human spirit and you just capture it
um
in lifeboat can you tell me
this the story behind this film as you
started to already tell
um can you tell me what is it about
so lifeboat um
[Music]
really seeks to
sort of
lift up and showcase
the asylum seeker
crisis
in the mediterranean when it was at its
height um
in 2016.
and um it came to be
for many reasons but but one of those
reasons is is um
colleagues in the ngo community really
shared with me that um when the borders
between greece and turkey were shut down
that the
the flow of a syrian asylum seekers that
was initially going across from turkey
to greece
was going to shift westward across the
mediterranean so i started to research
that and discovered that was exactly the
case
and then further
stumbled upon the fact that
nation states hadn't really stepped up
to address it and that there were
hundreds of asylum seekers often
drowning in these flimsy crafts that
were pushed off from the shores of libya
because the eu
wasn't doing its duty to um patrol those
waters from a humanitarian standpoint
and so
the net result of that was that this
whole sort of like humanitarian
community sprung up
um and it was civil society based
that that tried to meet the needs of
those asylum seekers to to just ensure
that fellow human beings weren't
drowning
simply put and one of those was this
small little ngo called sea watch which
when they discovered what was happening
just cobbled together a coalition of
volunteers
bought a research vessel retrofitted it
and
motored down off the coast of libya to
start pulling people out of the water
and again i found that inspiring right i
found that inspiring that this group of
volunteers
was doing something that our leaders
wouldn't
right and it was something as basic and
simple as saving human beings
and um i thought there was an inspiring
story there and as it turned out there
was
have you ever saved someone's life
as as a part of making these
documentaries directly and directly i
think you probably have
countless lives but directly were you
put in that position i i don't i don't i
don't wanna
i mean i certainly poured people out the
water who couldn't swim
i did that
and that's again speaking to the basic
humanity put down the camera and help
yeah
uh so this is people coming from libya
yeah trying to make it across the
mediterranean sea
on a crappy tiny boat from a filmmaker
perspective how do you film that was
there decisions
to capture the desperation
well we were you know
we were
going back to this idea of access and
how that's so fundamental to my approach
um
you know we we were bound by the
strictures of the rescue operation
on this sea watch vessel which was 30
meters long and we were two of a crew of
right so we had to multitask all the
time because the only reason we were on
that boat was
by agreeing that
if needed we would do whatever necessary
right to
um to help
right and so it's very active on
multiple levels and and um
we were making decisions each and every
day that were um not only filmmaking and
creative decisions but also just
decisions about
how
how to
live that duality right of being a
humanitarian and a filmmaker
simultaneously and the
the greatest example i can share
of that was
with my director of photography in that
project kenny allen
he um
kenny's a big guy it's like
he's got like arms like tree trunks and
um
and he because he was so physically able
and strong
the head of mission um
just really tasked him to be on the
zodiac to pull people out of the water
because he could literally with one arm
reach down and just oftentimes pull
someone out right
um whereas usually it would take two or
three people for it and so
when we were at the height of triage and
there were people in the water all over
and rafts were sinking
um kenny was out pulling people out of
the water and this went on for like 24
hours right and at the end of that first
day i remember like looking over on the
deck and seeing kenny like help people
up from the ladders to walk them back
right
and his camera was nowhere to be seen
yeah right and so i walked over to him
and i just
grabbed him by the shoulders and said
kenny
where is your camera
and he didn't know he had no idea where
his camera was right and so
i just said kenny
we're here to do what you're doing
but we're also here to film it right to
make sure that we document what is
unfolding in front of us so we have a
record of it right so we can bring it to
a larger audience so you need to go find
your camera so we can also document it
yeah and that kind of pulled him out and
he went and got his camera and started
filming again but but that gives you a
sense of sort of this world that we had
to live in in order to get the story
done but i think
to be a great director of photography to
be a great director you have to lose
yourself like that
in the story too
but usually with a camera in your hand
right but sometimes you forget the
camera i mean like there's uh
i feel like
if you're obsessed with the camera too
much
you can lose the humanity of it you get
obsessed with the film and the story it
can become clinical yes yeah absolutely
and it's it's you know i yeah absolutely
and and we don't want to become we i
don't want to become clinical in my
films certainly let me ask you uh a
strange and perhaps edgy question
so some filmmakers believe is justified
to break the rules
in order to tell a powerful story
warner herzog
um i read this somewhere teaches young
filmmakers to pick locks and forge
documents and so on i didn't know that
interesting
what do you think about that bending the
rules in service of telling a story
uh you would of course never break the
law
but is there
does that
uh just generally speaking bending
the rules and so on you know just
to elaborate on this question perhaps
i'm distinctly aware that there's parts
in the world where
the rule of law
is not
like
uh enforced
as cleanly as it is in the united states
as fairly as it is in the united states
that there's a kind of there's a lot of
bribery
there's a lot of
like you don't really
know to trust you can
you don't know if you can trust the cops
or
basically anybody so like the rules are
very hazy kind of concept
and a lot of them especially like it's
funny but authoritarian regimes often
have a giant bureaucracy build up that's
full of rules there's more rules and you
know what to deal with and you can't
actually live life unless you break the
rules anyway
laying that all out on the table
do you ever ever contend with that
on
what are the rules i can break or should
break
to keep to the spirit of the story
i think you have to ask yourself are the
rules just and why are there in place
right so for example coming into the
airport in southern yemen right
if i just tried to walk through the
airport with all my equipment even with
all the permissions beforehand like we
had without having a fixer
at the airport beforehand to make sure
we didn't go through the standard line
right
um
we would have been caught up for three
hours at least negotiating over our
equipment and eventually paying a bribe
to get it through yes right that's just
reality yeah in a place like yemen and
so of course knowing that right having
talked to colleagues who had taken that
path previously i took a different path
right well we hire a fixer beforehand
to sort it out beforehand right rather
than spending three hours of our time
and paying a series of bribes yes
instead we're going to get it fixed
beforehand so that we can walk through a
different line and have no one look at
any of our equipment
that's a pretty good
trade-off in my mind
what about security when you're
traveling in these places do you ever
have bodyguards
uh
well several questions around that are
you ever afraid for your life
when you're filming in a war zone
is there any
way to
lessen the probability of death
i don't have a death wish i try to
mitigate risk however i can however i
can
but one of the ways i can't do it in a
conflict zone is by having armed
security with me
and the reason for that is because
especially in a place like yemen right
if you have armed security you become a
target in a way that if you're operating
under
sort of the auspices of
international humanitarian law i
actually have more protection so i don't
bring security if you're working in
northern yemen for example
um
you're going to have someone from the de
facto authorities with you anyway the
entire time you're there
so
the authorities are with you
in form anyway
um regarding fear
um
yeah of course
i mean fear is a natural human emotion
right and i i think we have a weird
mindset
this sort of heroic mindset surrounding
fear in the u.s which i don't
pay tribute to
i
believe as a natural human emotion it's
an alarm bell that i need to pay
attention to right and
and i think
rather than
pretending to be brave right i think you
have to just acknowledge that
fear has a place
to keep you alive
and i think it's a matter of
not letting the fear arrest you right
and allowing the fear to live and then
acting anyway
don't you think as a documentary
filmmaker
the fear is a really good signal for
potentially a good thing to do because
there's a story there
so is fear is an indicator that you
shouldn't do it or is it an indicator
you should do it it's probably in the
case you should do it right um and you
know and
strangely that i think that's why
i think
that's if there's something unusual
about the work i do in some part it's
it's because of these types of stories
right they're hard to access
but you also have to have a threshold
of willingness
to
do them when
you can't um
you know there is no guarantee of
physical safety right and maybe that's
why you should do them
i'm very much motivated by the things
that scare me that they seem to direct
um the things that are worth doing in
this all too short life how often do you
interact with our friendly friends at
the police departments of various
locations
like uh
because of the humanitarian nature of
your work are you able to avoid
um all such friendly conversations or
are you often in
making friends with are i try to avoid
the friendly
police people all over the world as much
as possible
um
but in in some instances it's important
to be proactive right and make sure that
they know what you're doing before you
do it so it's all about the context and
the situation
for example working in northern yemen
you couldn't film for five minutes if if
you didn't have paperwork because you'd
be taken away so you have to make sure
you have all those permissions ahead of
time
50 feet from syria i
i would love to talk at least a little
bit about this film
first can you high level can you tell
what this documentary is about yeah it
was early in
the syrian uprising and
we returned to the syrian turkish border
with a syrian american orthopedic
surgeon who is volunteering operating on
refugees as they float across the border
from syria to turkey
and it was an attempt at the time before
a lot of films had come out about the
conflict
to um
really show again
um
the effects of the war on civilians
you've
heard me echo that sentiment multiple
times now but it it
you know people knew there was there was
a a major conflict in syria but didn't
really understand the form that that was
taken and the impact it was having and
so we we embedded into
the at the time it was the only clinic
in turkey that was sanctioned by the
turkish government um to treat uh syrian
refugees
and so we filmed there with surgeons as
they operated on war victims
and we also went into syria into some of
the camps as well
so in this film
there's a man who crosses the border
every day to retrieve the wounded and
fair them safety and care and you also
mentioned about heroism in the united
states
um can you tell me about this man and
just people like him like what's the
heroic action
in some of these places that you've
visited
so in that instance you know i thought
of him as the turkish schindler right
because he was human being who
of his own volition volition no one was
paying him to do this
but he was spending
much of his time
he was just a local businessman
who really saw the need in the camps
right across the border 10k away
and and and he saw the medical need in
particular and how hard it was to get
people in desperate medical conditions
across the border where there was a
clinic just right across the border but
because of the security and the layers
of security
they couldn't get out by themselves so
he took it upon himself
as a turkish person
to build relationships with the turkish
guards which was relatively easy
and then he built relationships with
sort of the the guards in the no man's
land
between the syrian guards and sort of
those who lived in the the middle area
and then also with the syrian guards at
the camp and he would drive out there
daily and bring them food
right
talk them up and build relationships and
if so every day he would bring these
guards food and build relationships with
them and and what that meant was
eventually right he had this avenue of
access to and from the camps and so he
started using it and he would drive this
avenue of access
through the three layers of guards each
day
and then they would open the gates for
him because he had made himself
trustworthy in their eyes and he would
receive the most desperate medical cases
that were coming from all over um
northern syria right to receive medical
treatment and he would as you see in the
film he would ferry them into the back
of his car
right and then drive them
to the hospital where they would receive
operations
and then
he would bring them back if they wanted
after they'd healed and recovered back
to syria if they wanted to return out
post recovery and you know he didn't get
paid for that he was spending his own
money to do it
because he saw other human beings in
need
and it's like we were talking about
earlier
that's heroic right that's selfless
that's
that's aspirational for me right here's
here's someone who is spending their
time on the planet
doing something of value and good to
other human beings
i mean if you draw parallels to
schindler i feel like
the fascinating thing about
uh schindler is that
he's kind of a flawed human
and he's not the kind of human that does
these things usually yeah but you just
can't help it yeah and that's like the
basic humanity despite
who you are the basic humanity shines
through i think the you know the whims
of war
test people in those ways right
they ask of you things that you may not
even
know we're going to be asked of you and
then it speaks to who who you are
fundamentally as a human being
they reveal
who you are as a human being just as you
said
um
let me ask a kind of the stupid
technical question about publications
and movies and so on
i've been um
recently becoming good friends with
thomas tall who was the producer
his company legendary funded some of the
big sort of blockbuster films and so on
and so obviously money is part of
filmmaking that's interesting but also
the release of movies and me as a
consumer
you know uh with netflix with youtube
you know
that's one of the reasons i'm a huge fan
of youtube is
it's like out in the open yeah access or
especially historical access like
over time you can look back years later
if you pay some money you can watch some
of the great films ever made
um youtube hulu netflix i don't know
what other services there are hbo
paramount permit plus paramount plus
um
anyway there's all these platforms
uh
spotify now
it's uh
i understand they want to create
paywalls and so on and make sense
but i'm a huge fan of openness and i'm
really kind of torn by this whole thing
anyway that's the discussion for perhaps
another time but the
the short question is
why is it so hard to watch your
documentaries
and other films
other incredible films on the internet
if i want to pay
unlimited amount of money
i want to pay a lot of money yeah to
watch it why is it so hard well lifeboat
is streaming free on the new
yorker uh yes i saw that but it's still
which is interesting
that doesn't make any sense and then
also
hunger ward
is on paramount plus but also pluto tv
it's which is free streaming free yeah
so you can either go through a pay wall
or you can watch it with ads yeah with
big macs interspersed
big macs sometimes yeah the contrast
well no it really reveals the power of
the documentary yeah
no but like it's still not even those
platforms are i mean they're not
they're not as easily accessible because
you have to like yeah you have to use
you have to think
and you have to chase a particular you
have to chase it yeah yeah yeah i i
guess from an economic standpoint the
answer that is pretty clear right it may
not be what people want to watch
maybe people want to watch
reality maybe people want to watch
animal rescue shows
right here in the u.s
which is exactly why
in part i think it's so vital that we
continue to do
stories on things that aren't about
flowers and puppy dogs right
i would push back on that so
there's tick tock
and you could say well look humans just
want to watch really short
content
because they seem to be addicted to that
kind of thing that's partially true
but they also watch
two three four five hour podcasts
and
on tick tock
no there's different platforms for that
this is a place called youtube i'll
teach you about it okay yeah i've never
heard of it
it's a good place to publish
documentaries i think
i
you know humans are interested in a lot
of things
and i've seen many times a thing that
you think is a niche thing become a very
big thing
but for them to become mainstream they
have to have a platform that
allows for the mainstream to happen
access the access the
the dumb simple frictionless access the
frictional
frictionless access is a really
important thing
um you know pay walls create friction
and not just because of the money
it can be free but if you have to click
on a thing or maybe sign up
uh or put your email but
it's it's just not
it creates a
it it
it prevents you to enjoy the thing you
would really enjoy and you know you
would enjoy but your baser human
nature prevents you from enjoying
because you can just open up tech talk
and keep scrolling
so it that that's just something to say
about platforms because i think the
things that need platforms the most
are things like your films
the things that i think a lot of people
would love watching
they're very important and they can have
viral impact on the world that is
fundamentally positive you know it's
just it it makes me sad that there's not
a
machine
for for celebrating those films
there are lots of machines to celebrate
them but they're just not as always
accessible as youtube right i mean as
soon as you write me that check for a
trillion dollars when i walk out of here
yeah then i'm gonna put all my films on
youtube because then i won't have to
worry about you know selling them you
know so i can make the next film because
you know film is not just an art it's
also an industry yes right and that
tension between the two is a constant
interplay that that is a reality for me
so i always have to think about
um
how can i access the largest audience
but also right go out and shoot the next
film yes right so that longevity
question is also an issue and and the
finances are part of that
sort of equation that i constantly have
to rewrite over and over again how often
as a creative mind do you feel the
constraints the financial constraints
i wish i could do
a lot more films
that i can't always
because of financial constraints so it's
the number of films yeah
and are you is a is a film that you do
currently is a film that you do at any
one time as you're filming it already
funded
or is it the funding from previous stuff
that you're trying to use
before hunger ward
um
i would just take a flyer on my films
right where i would just
say this this meets the so wet threshold
this is a story that has to be told and
and i want i want to tell it
um and then i could just go shoot it and
usually on credit usually on a credit
card right
so so based on a belief that that a
lifeboat was done that way yes right 50
feet from syria was done that so you're
on a boat broke
yeah yeah but it's free food right and
free lodging because there's a bunk on
the boat but i do that i do that not
intending to stay broke right but but
based on a foundational belief that
if i if i bring to bear
all of my sort of
you know quiver of creative arrows to it
right that i i can create something of
value right in the world but hopefully
also um financially that then i can sell
to someone and you know every time i've
done that lex i've gotten into the black
so it's a risk
and i have to have a certain risk
threshold financially to do that but i
believe so deeply in these stories that
i'm willing to do that i didn't have to
do that with hunger ward luckily i had
funders
um for that film
yeah
yeah take risks in this life it's gonna
pay off
which reminds me of let me ask you i
already asked you
for advice about for a filmmaker how to
win an oscar
well i haven't won an oscar how to get
nominated for an oscar that's true
or just how to make great documentaries
how to make great film but let me ask
even zuma bigger
yeah you mentioned some of these things
doing the things that you think matters
what advice would you give to young
people
high school college
dreaming of uh
living a life worth living
what advice would you give them about
career or maybe just life in general
kind of a life they can be proud of
yeah i don't know how you're going to
react to this given given sort of your
expertise but i i would say um oh put
down the smartphone yes step away from
the monitor
right because real life
is not a screen
right i believe that sort of
the foundational skills which are
which are conducive and important to
success
um aren't necessarily those technical
skills
which we're going to l learn in trade
schools or or university i think the
they're more foundational than that
they're learning how to interact
um and listen with humans with humans
yeah to really see
and listen
right
um and observe and observe right um and
how to step out of your door and if the
electricity goes out right and you're
five miles away from your house you
don't need a smartphone to get home
because you've set visual markers for
yourself on how to get back to where you
live right i think we're in danger right
now
of
living in a world where if the
satellites stop functioning right um
then a whole lot of people become
completely
dysfunctional right because we're so
reliant upon the screens in our lives so
i think there's a lot of foundational
skills that have nothing to do with
technology that we need to learn that
that and everything rests upon those so
i would say learn those foundations
learn how to write well
read a lot right
it's a different kind of knowledge and
wisdom that comes out of that
so reading is kind of the equivalent of
listening and observing and writing is
kind of
integration of all of that that you've
observed and listened to and tried to
express something with that so i think
my training in the theater
has served me so well in the documentary
world right because it's all about
interaction and listening and talking
and dialogue right and that's what i do
in documentaries right is i listen
yeah i yeah um we mentioned fear
i'm being an introvert i'm very afraid
of people but i'm drawn to them
i've been fascinated by them because of
that yeah enjoy
them totally and
um
observing them and you mentioned reading
you mentioned books as a catalyst as a
stimulator of your imagination is there
books in your life
a couple one two three
that kind of
left an impact or
or a little bit of spark of inspiration
early on in life
that stand out from your memory i i was
given um the prophet by kilio de braun
when i as a graduation president from my
eighth from my high school english
teacher
and i still have that book in a special
place on my bookshelf because i think it
speaks to
the nature of human experience right and
i return to it all the time
because there's wisdom there you know
but but there's uh many many books so
fiction or non-fiction what what
connects with you usually
in the past when the
i read mostly non-fiction most of the
time
um ten points is a book i love a lot
what is it what is ten points ten points
is um i think his name is bill
strickland he was the editor of i think
bicycle magazine
and it's sort of his personal memoir of
um his experience growing up with a lot
of abuse and how that transformed him as
a human being
you know
one instrumental book for me that i
bumped into in my early 20s
boy these are all non-fiction
except for the princess bride um
i have to mention it's an outlier
no no the seven habits of highly
effective people yes um i read that in
my early twenties yeah and i found
so many of um the principles in that
book what are what are the habits from
that one
uh
seek first to understand than to be
understood is one of them you know the
notion of proactivity is one of them
um it's it's really and so i've held on
to some of those principles through my
life as well
for sure
what
have been
you've observed
suffering
darker aspects of human nature in your
own personal life
what has been some of the darkest
moments in your life
darkest times in your life
is there
something
that you went through
and then perhaps you carry it
through your work
yeah
probably one of the darkest moments was
an experience that i had
again in my early 20s
and i was living in southern california
and
i
you know the pacific coast highway that
goes north and south along the beach and
there's that little
uh concrete path that people jog and
ride their bikes and i was riding my
bike on the on the pch
and um i was coming up to a corner on it
and i heard this tremendous crash
and it was really loud and i came across
the corn around the corner
and it was a car accident a car crash it
was a multiple multiple vehicle crash
and what had happened is that um a volvo
had um
hit another car
and then when it hit it it went over the
top of the car
and hit a volkswagen van and it peeled
away the top of the volkswagen van when
it hit it and then landed
so three vehicles
and it just happened
and um
lying in the middle of the road
was
a body
decapitated
and there was another
person
from one of the cars lying in the middle
of the road still alive
and then on the hood of the volvo
was this woman who had come through the
windshield just
a mess blood everywhere
moaning
back and forth
and
a bystander
ran into the middle of the road
and started administering first aid to
the person lying in the road
and
i stood there watching the scene
and every
fiber of my being
wanted to run to the woman
on the hood of the volvo
and do something anything right just to
be there and it was obvious to me that
she was she was gonna die
but i felt like at least if i ran there
i could offer some comfort for her last
moment
and right then
the sirens started to blare
and i knew that
there'd be paramedics there within
minutes that that people would come to
help
and i froze
and i was scared
and i didn't do anything
and i watched
while this woman
died on the hood of the volvo
and that experience
is sort of seared into my consciousness
um the fact that i watched and didn't
act
i i feel is one of the great failures of
my life
that i wasn't able to act in a moment of
need no matter how small
and from that
i made a decision
out of that experience that
if i ever found myself in a situation
where i had the ability to act and i
could act
to help another human being in such need
that i would act
that i wouldn't let
fear
freeze me instead i would allow that
fear to catalyze me into action
and do something and intervene in
whatever way i could
even if i didn't have the skill set
and in some ways
all of that echoes in your documentaries
you're not going to let fear
stop you from trying to help i think
that experience that that experience of
failure
what i s what i framed as
just human failure on my part um
is is foundational probably for my work
like i don't want that to happen again
legs like like i i don't want to be that
person who watches
i want to do what i can when i can
if we zoom out
you were just one human that witnessed
that that trauma you you
one human that witnessed so much
suffering in different parts of the
world and as we zoom out across space
and time and look at earth
why do you think
we're here
on this earth
what's
the meaning of human civilization was
the meaning of your life
of individual
human life
and
broadly speaking what is the meaning of
life
skye fitzgerald no boy
yeah
uh
for me per i can speak personally on
that only and that's that i believe that
the meaning of my life
is to try to make the world a little bit
better before i go
you know i
when i was in theater and grad school
i directed a play called shadowlands by
c.s lewis
and there's a quote from that it goes
like this
we are like blocks of stone out of which
the sculptor carves the forms of men
the blows of his chisel
which hurt us so much are what make us
perfect
now i would take away the perfect part
right
but i think i've remembered that quote
for so many years
because i believe in the underlying
notion that
the blows of the chisel which are the
experiences that we go through shape us
right necessarily so and hopefully shape
us into a better human being and in my
case
a human being that i hope can make the
world a little better
you know through those blows
before it's over yeah before it's over
before you go as you said you think
about that
you think about the the going part
your mortality you ever think about that
you said you don't have a death wish you
tried to minimize risk but eventually
it's going to be over yeah for all of us
absolutely well speak for yourself
well you've got other plans to sell tend
to merge
i'm going to merge with robots
embody
not at all yes for all of us
unfortunately or fortunately or who who
the heck knows
um but do you
um ponder your mortality are you afraid
of it
i live with my my mortality knowing that
that it's fleeting that my life is
fleeting and that that
i'm gonna go into the ground uh just
like everyone else or maybe as ashes you
know
um
so i live with that knowledge every day
but i don't allow it
to stop me or hold me up rather i really
it drives me
alright it drives me to try to get as
much done as i can before i go
right
yeah so the knowledge of your death
uh is a kind of dance partner
and you try to dance beautifully
this guy you're an incredible human um
incredible artist and filmmaker
and it's a huge honor that you would sit
and
spend your really valuable time with me
today i really really enjoyed this
conversation
thanks for having me lex and thanks for
doing what you do thanks for listening
to this conversation with skye
fitzgerald to support this podcast
please check out our sponsors in the
description and now let me leave you
with some words from ellie wiesel
the opposite of love is not hate it's
indifference
the opposite of art is not ugliness
it's indifference
the opposite of faith is not heresy it's
indifference
and the opposite of life is not death
it's
indifference
thank you for listening i hope to see
you
next time