The Sundance Film Festival heads into the week with more world premieres and a peek at many of the films that will grace the Specialty Big Screen this year. Beginning last week, Movieline posted details about this year's U.S. and World Competition films and filmmakers in their own words. In this round, Richard Rowley (Dirty Wars), Dylan Mohan Gray (Fire in the Blood), Roger Ross Williams (God Loves Uganda), Hannah Fidell (A Teacher) and Shaul Schwarz (Narco Cultura) preview their films.
[Related: WATCH: Get To Know 5 Sundance Film Festival Filmmakers (And Their Films)]
Dirty Wars by director Richard Rowley [U.S. Documentary Competition]
Synopsis:
It’s the dirty little secret of the War on Terror: all bets are off, and almost anything goes. We have fundamentally changed the rules of the game and the rules of engagement. Prior to 9/11, it was customary for America to sound a formal declaration of war on a given country before attacking. Today drone strikes, night raids, and U.S. government–condoned torture occur in hidden corners across the globe, generating unprecedented civilian casualties. Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill traces the rise of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the most secret and elite fighting force in U.S. history, exposing covert operations carried out by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress. No target is off-limits for the JSOC “kill list,” even if the person is a U.S. citizen. [Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival]
Responses by Richard Rowley
Dirty Wars quick pitch:
Part action film and part detective story, Dirty Wars is a gripping journey into one of the most important and underreported stories of our time. We follow investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, who is pulled into an unexpected journey as he chases down the hidden truth behind America’s expanding covert wars.
…and why it's worth checking out at Sundance and beyond:
Dirty Wars takes on the issues everyone’s talking about right now. With Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, drones, Benghazi, and the nomination of John Brennan — America’s covert wars are back in the headlines.
Dirty Wars reveals how these wars have been hidden in plain sight all along and offers a behind-the-scenes look at a high-stakes investigation into the operations, and even the same people, fictionalized by Hollywood and discussed on Capitol Hill.
Dirty Wars is not “based on actual events” — it is actual events.
The focus has been on one raid by Special Forces that killed one man, Osama bin Laden. That same year, there were thousands of raids and we’re ten years into wars not just in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in Somalia, with new fronts in Yemen and elsewhere. That’s the story of Dirty Wars and it couldn’t be more timely and urgent for Sundance and other audiences.
How it all came together:
The film that will premiere at Sundance looks and feels nothing like the film we set out to shoot. During our three years in production, we hit major roadblocks just trying to confirm basic information about the Joint Special Operations Command, a secret, elite force reporting directly to the White House. Few in government would go on record. Talking heads? That was out of the question. We had to find another way in to the story. So we went far afield and to new sources. As a result, the final film is more compelling, and surprising.
When I realized that there were two dramatic arcs — one of America’s expanding covert wars, and another the personal story of the reporter, Jeremy Scahill — I knew I’d have to convince Jeremy to be in front of the camera. It made him uncomfortable. But he was the right choice to guide us through a complex story. By the end, in our editorial meetings, even Jeremy started to refer to himself in the third person.
Mogadishu was by far the most dangerous place I’ve ever been, though I’ve reported from war zones for many years. We didn’t want drive-by journalism: in and out in a few days, talking to government officials in hotel lobbies. But getting to the war's front lines, without drawing too much attention to ourselves, proved complicated. Our Somali country coordinator made it possible. Meanwhile, our producers took out kidnapping, dismemberment, and ransom insurance. Estimating the cost of my arm before we set out – well, that was something new.
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Narco Cultura by Director Shaul Schwarz [U.S. Documentary Competition]
Synopsis:
To a growing number of Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, narco-traffickers have become iconic outlaws and the new models of fame and success. They represent a pathway out of the ghetto, nurturing a new American dream fueled by the war on drugs. Narco Cultura looks at this explosive phenomenon from within, exposing cycles of addiction to money, drugs, and violence that are rapidly gaining strength on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Artfully lensed, Narco Cultura exquisitely manages to capture the horrific devastation wreaked by the drug cartels. Focusing on certain disparate individuals impacted by them, including a narco-corridos singer in the U.S. and a crime scene investigator in Juarez, the film vividly portrays both the allure and the human cost of it all. Photographer/filmmaker Shaul Schwarz has crafted a dazzling, yet harrowing, examination of the viral effect of the violence that has reshaped the face of a country and created an entire subculture that celebrates corruption. [Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival]
Responses by Shaul Schwarz
The Narco Cultura quick pitch:
To a growing number of Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, narco-traffickers have become iconic outlaws, glorified by musicians who praise their new models of fame and success. They represent a pathway out of the ghetto, nurturing a new American dream fueled by an addiction to money, drugs, and violence. Narco Cultura is an explosive look at the drug cartels’ pop culture influence on both sides of the border as experienced by an LA narcocorrido singer dreaming of stardom and a Juarez crime scene investigator on the front line of Mexico’s Drug War.
…and why it's worth seeing at Sundance and beyond:
Its unique look at an issue that affects all of us, and happening right here at home. Everything that has been done thus far on the drug war has been a talking head-style documentary, with archive footage gathered from different sources. Narco Cultura is a cinema verite doc, shot entirely by one photographer, following the lives of two characters entangled in the drug war. It puts you on the ground, and in the belly of the beast. From the streets of Juarez to the Narco clubs in LA to the living room of a drug lord in Sinaloa, the film gives an audience unprecedented access to the issue. The Drug War has touched the lives of millions, beyond the 60,000 lives it has already claimed. While death statistics have been documented ad nauseam, far less has been said about the broader social reality created by the drug trade. Narco Cultura focuses on the culture shared by millions of Mexicans and Latin-Americans inevitably involved in or affected by the drug trade and a desire for "Narco Luxury."
Managing access and safety:
Getting access while staying safe was the biggest challenge in making this film. We were always pushing to get through the characters’ stories to the heart of the drug war, and for that we needed to win their full trust. After we did that, we needed to be with them in terrifying moments. Even more so, we had to figure out what we didn’t want to cover. It was clear that in order to stay safe and not endanger others we had to draw lines in the sand, and that would later become a reality in the editing room as well. There are many scenes that did not make the cut because we believed they might endanger someone.
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Fire In the Blood by director Dylan Mohan Gray [World Documentary Competition]
Synopsis:
In 1996, the development of antiretroviral drug therapies may not have cured AIDS, but the breakthrough made the disease treatable—if patients could afford the hefty price tag. For millions in the developing world, the cost kept essential medicines out of reach and meant they would continue to die. Hope came in the form of low-cost generic drugs manufactured in India and elsewhere, but pharmaceutical companies—favoring patents over patients and profits over the prevention of unnecessary deaths—threatened legal action against any company that dared circumvent their control of the market. The struggle to overcome this inconceivably greedy blockade—with literally life or death stakes—is at the heart of Dylan Mohan Gray’s absorbing documentary.
Gray uses the response to the AIDS crisis in Africa to reveal the power of the drug companies and the impact of their lobby on the federal government. The implications of their ability to effectively deny critical treatment based on economic inequities are more far reaching than any single disease. [Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival]
Responses by Dylan Mohan
Fire in the Blood quick pitch:
Fire in the Blood is the chronicle of a staggering crime which killed upwards of ten million people as well as the untold story of an extraordinary group of individuals who dared take on the world’s most powerful companies and governments in a desperate effort to bring the carnage to an end.
…and why it's worth seeing at Sundance and beyond:
This is a true crime story of almost unfathomable dimensions, populated with extraordinary characters… it is invariably a huge eye-opener for all who see it.
At least ten million people who could have been saved with available low-cost AIDS medication died agonizing deaths due to the willful denial of antiretroviral drugs to Africa and other parts of the global south for several years after they were more or less universally available in the US and every other Western country. And no one has ever been called to account.
Fire in the Blood tells the story of those who fought back at the same time as it debunks pharmaceutical industry claims that the only way to finance development of life-saving drugs is to sell them at extortionate prices only a tiny sliver of the world’s population can pay, and it sounds a warning bell about the ever-worsening crisis of access to medicine, impacting upon rich countries as well as poor, with hundreds of millions of lives hanging in the balance. This is something which at some point affects absolutely everyone on the planet, and no one who sees this film will ever look at medicine the same way again.
Challenges, Bill Clinton and how it all came together…
I came to this project from the narrative world, with little experience in non-fiction, so there were many adjustments in thinking I needed to make. Probably the hardest for me was constantly having to convince people that they should take part in the film, yet still being totally at the mercy of their whims and moods even after they had agreed to do so. In the feature world there is generally a big unit on location somewhere and everyone anywhere close to the set is an experienced professional, there to do a job. I found it very difficult, especially at first, having to plead with people to turn up somewhere, to let us shoot them in their everyday lives, having to explain why we needed to do what we were doing, etc., bearing in mind that as a rule documentary subjects are not paid for their time, apart perhaps for some minor expenses, nor are they professional performers.
Sometimes people would just not show up and I’d be sitting there with my crew watching my already-tight budget fly out the window. Even when that didn’t happen, people would often be resistant to giving us the amount of time we needed, so that created stresses of its own. It was frustrating to constantly be on edge about whether we were going to be able to do things because whomever we were shooting with might just decide they didn’t feel like doing it… Also, being a first-time director, it sometimes seems like most of the people involved feel like they’re doing you a favor – and, to be fair, in many cases they are – but that’s not a particularly good basis for doing quality work, so you have to find ways to change that equation.
Getting the interview with Bill Clinton was another adventure… he was a major part of our story, and we had some great archive material of him I was very keen to use, but it would have felt strange to include it without our own interview. After getting the runaround for about a year and a half, someone from the Clinton Foundation finally took pity on me, and we were granted the interview at a Clinton Global Initiative summit in Hong Kong. I had just had major emergency knee surgery, and was on crutches in severe pain, but had to quickly find a crew and go to Hong Kong on short notice to do the interview. When the appointed time arrived and passed, a junior assistant came to me to say that the President’s schedule had been changed, and he would not be able to do the interview until “sometime later”.
It suddenly looked like despite all the effort and cost involved in getting to this point we were going to be unceremoniously bumped. My appeals to President Clinton’s handlers were met with a distinct lack of empathy. Just as things were beginning to look really bleak I ran into another, somewhat more helpful press person I had spoken to earlier and she conspiratorially whispered to me “Why didn’t you tell me you were one of Ron’s people?” I was unsure how exactly I should react to this, but it seemed like a bad idea to admit I had no idea what she meant, so I just tossed my head back and gave a knowing laugh.
It soon became clear that a rumor had spread around the conference venue that we were an undercover crew from Ron Howard’s company posing as documentary people from India. I never figured out precisely why Ron Howard would have needed a secret crew at a Clinton summit in Hong Kong, but suddenly it seemed like I was everyone’s best friend and smiles appeared where earlier there had been frowns. I quickly instructed my crew people to play along if asked, obviously without actually confirming anything, yay or nay. Soon enough, President Clinton was seated across from me in a chair and we had an excellent interview. In all probability it would have worked out anyway, but if I ever do happen to meet Ron Howard, I’m definitely going to thank him nonetheless.
Insight on the trailer:
When I put the trailer together, I wanted people to come away from it with a strong desire to see the film itself… That might seem fairly obvious, but I was keen not to give too much away, to leave a lot of questions in the viewer’s mind. I wanted to show this as a global story and very much a “crime story”, as opposed to a “social issue documentary”… We’ve had a huge amount of positive feedback on the trailer, and I personally think it’s very effective.
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God Loves Uganda by Roger Ross Williams [U.S. Documentary Competition]
Synopsis:
A battle rages in East Africa, where crosses replace guns and shouts of prayer roar louder than missiles. American evangelical Christians have chosen Uganda, with Africa’s youngest and most vulnerable population, as their ground zero in a battle for the soul of a continent. American missionaries and religious leaders are working with African pastors in a radical campaign to eradicate sin through the most extreme measures. The stakes are nothing less than life and death.
Filmmaker Roger Ross Williams exposes the missionary movement in Uganda as an outgrowth of Africa’s colonialist past and a twenty-first century crusade to recreate a continent of people in the image and likeness of America’s most extreme fundamentalists. Williams captures vérité footage so shocking that viewers may be squirming in their seats. Masterfully crafted and astonishingly provocative, God Loves Uganda may be the most terrifying film of the year. [Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival]
Responses by Roger Ross Williams
The God Loves Uganda quick pitch:
God Loves Uganda is a powerful exploration of the evangelical campaign to change African culture with values imported from America’s Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting “sexual immorality” and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow Biblical law.
…and why it's worth seeing at Sundance and beyond:
David Courier the senior programmer at Sundance called it “astonishingly provocative” and said that it may be “the most terrifying film of the year.” If that does not get you to the theater then I don’t know what will. I believe that documentaries should enlighten and provoke. I hope God Loves Uganda does just that.
Challenges and how it all came together:
I sat on the other side of the camera many times and listened to homophobic Ugandan and American pastors tell me how evil and sick gay people are. Many said they had never really met a homosexual. Little did they know that one was right in front of their nose. It’s not easy to hear someone say such hateful and ignorant things about you and try not to react but I was there to document not to react.
While shooting in Uganda in 2011, the conservative evangelical pastors I was filming -- the most ardent supporters of the country's now famous Anti-Homosexuality Bill -- discovered that I myself am gay. One began circulating emails suggesting that I be killed. I left the country immediately, and hoped I'd never have to go back.
Cut to a year later. I'm with my editors at the Sundance Documentary Edit lab and it is becoming abundantly clear that we needed more footage from Uganda. We needed to spend more time there to do justice to this very complicated, and very important story. And the only way to get it right meant I had to go back. Either I sacrificed, or the story would have to. And so I went. I spent three terrifying, thrilling weeks in Uganda, knowing full well that this would be the last time I was in a country I've been filming for the past three years. And I'm happy to say that without the footage we captured on that last trip, "God Loves Uganda" probably wouldn't be premiering at Sundance.
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A Teacher by director Hannah Fidell [NEXT Section]
A Teacher trailer from Hannah Fidell on Vimeo.
Synopsis:
Diana, a young, attractive teacher at a suburban Texas high school, is well-liked by her students and colleagues. Her life seems to be following the status quo, but in reality she’s having a secret affair with her student Eric. She confides in no one but him, reveling in the teenage terrain of sexting and backseat quickies. Even when the risk of discovery looms over their relationship, her investment in the fantasy remains stronger than reality. Unable to control herself, she heads down a reckless path of self-destruction.
The subject of a teacher-student affair may be tabloid fodder, but writer/director Hannah Fidell resists sensationalism or the temptation to pathologize her protagonist. At its core, Diana’s affair with her student is the manifestation of her avoidance of responsibility, and the film lets us in on her internal struggle. With bold vision, Fidell uses highly controlled pacing, silky camera movements, and a tense percussive sound aesthetic to free her narrative from the confines of convention, while a fascinating performance by Lindsay Burdge transports us into Diana’s head space, where her unabated obsession lives. [Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival]
Responses by Hannah Fidell
A Teacher quick pitch:
The film is about a popular young high school teacher in Austin, TX who has an affair with one of her students.
…and why it's worth seeing at Sundance and beyond:
We’ve all read about female teachers who have sex with their students, but haven’t you ever wondered what actually goes on in one of those relationships? And what actually drives a teacher to cross that line?
Challenges and how it all came together:
Money, money, money. It was also surprisingly hard (or I guess now that I’m thinking about it, not so surprising) to find a school that would let us shoot there. Not many school administrators want to hear that the film being shot in their halls and classrooms is actually about a teacher who sleeps with a student.
Background on the cast:
I wrote the part of the teacher for Lindsay Burdge. One night over dinner with Lindsay, I mentioned that I had an idea for a film about a high school teacher who has an affair with a student. She immediately told me she wanted to play the role of the teacher and that I wasn’t allowed to cast anyone else. Luckily, I was hoping she would say that. She’s an incredible actress and now everyone else will get to see just how talented she is.
I had open auditions for the role of the student and Will (Brittain) stood out with his east Texas accent and boyish charm. Will also drove to the audition in a camouflage pick up truck...that kind of sealed the deal for me. For the roommate, played by the lovely Jennifer Prediger, I had watched Joe Swanberg’s Uncle Kent (Sundance ‘10) and developed a giant friend crush on her. She’s the ‘every girl’ that I was looking for. A perfect compliment to the spiraling out of control Diana (the teacher). If I remember correctly, I did some immediate Facebook stalking after I watched the movie to see who Jenny and I knew in common - Sophia Takal then introduced us over email and the rest was history!
And details on the trailer:
This trailer is meant to show that A Teacher isn’t really a love story. At it’s core, the film is about a lonely, struggling young woman who has made some poor choices...a woman who isn’t ready to face adulthood, who clings to adolescence both literally and metaphorically.