Variety’s Doc Dreams NYC event returned for its second year on Nov. 10 and featured two panels with some of this year’s buzziest documentary feature contenders.
Speakers on the first panel included Dan Farah, director and producer of “The Age of Disclosure”; Petra Costa, writer, director and producer of “Apocalypse In The Tropics”; Mark Obenhaus, director and producer of “Cover Up”; and Eugene Jarecki, director of “The Six Billion Dollar Man.”
“The Age of Disclosure” seeks to establish a strong case for the existence of non-human intelligent life by including the accounts of 34 high-level officials in the government with direct knowledge of the matter, in which Farah admitted it took a while for his subjects to willingly and lawfully disclose sensitive information about the taboo topic for fear of imprisonment, career setbacks, and tarnishing their reputations.
Opting to make the film independently allowed him to keep creative control and minimize sensationalization of the shared information.
“People started getting on this plan of this being the way real information would come out and be shared with the public,” he explained. “Each person I met felt a weight on their shoulders with what they knew that the public didn’t. A lot of these people articulated to me how it eats them up that they’re aware of this information that impacts all of us, and the average person is completely clueless.”
Farah continued, “They felt it was an obligation to find a way to bring it out in a safe, comfortable way. They also found comfort in being arm in arm with senior officials from the military, government and intelligence committee.”
Costa’s documentary, “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” exposes the rise of and impact of Christian nationalism in Brazil, where she follows the country’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, and pastor Silas Malafaia.
The filmmaker recalled the backlash she received from Bolsonaro after the release of her previous documentary, “The Edge of Democracy,” which explored the unraveling of two Brazilian presidencies in 2019.
“When [“The Edge of Democracy”] was nominated, the far right started to attack me a lot, Costa said. “Bolsonaro gave a public speech saying that the film was crap that vultures should eat. Then he used his official Twitter to attack me. He’s calling me a traitor of the Brazilian state, and I became a trending topic. It was very disconcerting. That lasted a few months, where I would constantly be attacked by his digital militias, and one of his evangelical congressmen asked for my imprisonment by the law of national security.”
Obenhaus discussed how his friendship with Seymour Hersh played a big part in making “Cover Up,” which explores Hersh’s career as an investigative reporter. Despite having a friendship, Obenhaus explained how that didn’t stop them from having conflicts at certain points during filming.
“At one point, he quits, but he comes back,” he said. “I was used to that kind of behavior. It was not unfamiliar to me, and I couldn’t doubt that he was committed to the film and was going to stick with it. One of the things I’m proud of is that it comes through in the film, and in no way does it whitewash or somehow brush over his foibles.”
Jarecki touched on how he didn’t expect his film “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” a story that traces the life of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, to be reflective of current issues involving the threat against the right of access to public information.
“We had no idea that while we were making it, the world would plummet into fascism and especially into information fascism, making Assange suddenly like a real soothsayer and canary in the coal mine,” Jarecki said.
Speakers on Doc Dreams NYC’s second panel included Allison McGourty, writer and producer and Bernard McMahon, director, writer and producer of “Becoming Led Zeppelin”; Ryan White, director and producer of “Come See Me in the Good Light”; Sam Mirpoorian, co-director, editor and producer of “Saving Superman”; and Ben Stiller of “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost.”
“Becoming Led Zeppelin” explores the journey of and early formation of the band rock “Led Zeppelin.” McGourty and McMahon opened up about the challenges they faced trying to find distribution for their film, revealing that the film was a hard project to sell before Sony Pictures Classics signed on.
“Making the film was incredibly difficult,” McGourty said. “There were a few fragments of footage about this group because they never filmed. If you met somebody trying to film them in a concert, their manager would pull the film from the camera, smash the camera and eject that person from the venue. Every fragment you see in our film is all that exists. It was hard to make. Then, we had to persevere through the pandemic. We had to go on hiatus for a year. When nobody wanted to buy the film, we didn’t know what to do.”
White discussed how the filming and editing process changed while making “Come See Me in the Good Light,” which followed spoken word poet Andrea Gibson and their partner, Megan Falley, navigating Gibson’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer. Coming into the project with the assumption they would be with Gibson until her death, White explained how premiering at the Sundance Film Festival changed the entire ending of their film.
“At the end of my film, you don’t know if they’re alive or dead,” White said. “No one at Sundance, especially in an industry screening of 600 people, knew. When the film ended and Andrea walked up to do their Q&A with the audience, it was electric. But it was one of those things where you have to be at the mercy of the story. You have to let the story tell you what it’s about and what your ending is.”
Mirpoorian discussed how he gained the trust of his subjects while co-directing “Saving Superman” with Adam Oppenheim, which chronicles the true story of Jonathan, a 57-year-old man with autism spectrum disorder and known for his Superman persona. When his home was threatened by a new property owner, the community and his best friend Julie launched a grassroots program to save him.
“There was a very sentimental element to it because Adam is Julie’s nephew,” Mirporrian said. “Knowing that, he could trust her and know that he’s not going to be exploitative in any capacity.”
Ben Stiller opened up about his mother’s battle with alcoholism in his documentary “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost,” which tells the story of his parents’ 60-year relationship. While Stiller was comfortable including his mother’s sobriety journey in his film, he admitted he worried about his father’s reaction to adding that detail.
“The other part of it was trying to tell the story of their whole relationship over 60 years,” Stiller said. “Showing something that’s very personal in her life and getting the right balance of that in the movie, I hoped would give people a sense of what the overall feeling of their relationship was.”
Although a personal story for Stiller to debut, he said he’s open to making more documentaries in the future.
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