Lex Fridman Podcast - #278 – Skye Fitzgerald: Hunger, War, and Human Suffering

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Skye Fitzgerald is a two-time Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, his films include Hunger Ward, Lifeboat, and 50 Feet from Syria. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Notion: https://notion.com/startups to get up to $1000 off team plan - Mizzen+Main: https://mizzenandmain.com and use code LEX to get $35 off - BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/lex to get 10% off - Onnit: https://lexfridman.com/onnit to get up to 10% off - Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex and use code LEX to get special savings EPISODE LINKS: Skye's Twitter: https://twitter.com/spin_film Skye's Instagram: https://instagram.com/spin_film Hunger Ward (movie): https://hungerward.org Lifeboat (movie): https://lifeboatdocumentary.com 50 Feet from Syria (movie): https://50feetfromsyria.com PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (06:34) - World hunger (12:37) - Hunger Ward (35:04) - Language (40:15) - Famine (50:59) - Authoritarianism (57:27) - Storytelling (1:11:01) - Access (1:15:24) - Trust (1:19:06) - Film equipment (1:23:52) - Editing (1:30:21) - Filmmaking (1:43:20) - Favorite Films (1:54:28) - Lifeboat (2:01:53) - Breaking rules (2:04:48) - Fear (2:08:27) - 50 feet from Syria (2:13:24) - Money and distribution (2:21:02) - Advice for young people (2:24:07) - Books (2:26:01) - Darkest moments (2:30:32) - Meaning of life (2:32:30) - Mortality

The following is a conversation with Skyfist Gerald, 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. And now a quick few second mention of his sponsor. Check them out in the description, it's the best way to support this podcast. We got Notion for no taking, Mis-in-Main for fashion, better help for wellness, on it for focus, and 8 sleep for rest. Choose wisely my friends. And now, onto the full adries, as always, no ads in the middle.

I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Notion, a note-taking and team collaboration tool and combines note-taking, document sharing, wiki project management, and much more in one space that's simple, powerful, and beautifully designed. People just don't shout out about telling me how much they love notion. The teams, like programming teams, design teams, engineering teams, that's what I work with. Editor's sort of like creative teams as well. They use notion. They use notion for the collaboration aspects. So it's not

just individual note taken, it's also the collaboration. And that's actually the latter thing is what notion wants me to tell you about, which is that it's a full on operating system for running every aspect of a startup. It's running a special offer for said startups. You get up to a thousand bucks off notions team plan by going to notion.com slash startups to give you a sense that's almost a year of free notion for a team of 10. Go to notion.com slash startups. To give you a sense, that's almost the year of free notion for a team of 10. Go to notion.com slash startups. That's notion.com slash startups.

This show is also brought to you by Miss In A Main, the makers of comfortable, stylish, dare I say sexy dress shirts and other menswear. I wear their black dress shirt and I love it. It combines comfort and flexibility of athletic wear with the fit and style of a custom dress shirt. It's lightweight, breathable, and moisture-wicking. I really definitely like the way it feels. It seems to fit the body well, like there's an athletic cut to it, but it doesn't feel constraining. So you can move around pretty freely, especially in the, you know, hot Austin spring or summer. Anyway, they have all kinds of styles. I just happen to be wearing the black dress shirts

because, you know, that's the color and the minimalism style that I like. Right now, if you go to mizzenmain.com and use Promoco Lex, you'll receive 35 bucks off and your regular price order of $125 or more. So go to MisinMain.com and use our Promoco Lex. This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P-H-H-H-E-L-P. They figure out what you need and match you with a licensed professional in under 48 hours. Ever since I had that conversation on the podcast with Carl Diceroth, who is a psychiatrist, I've been thinking a lot about this dream I had long ago of becoming a psychiatrist. There's power to conversation.

It doesn't have to be in a clinical setting. It doesn't have to be in a kind of. It doesn't have to be in a kind of patient doctor relationship. Just two humans. Two humans trying to help each other, trying to figure each other out. I guess one being a lead, one being the follow. Maybe one during this particular moment, this particular day needing more help. That's what conversation is about. Truly making a person feel heard. Anyway, I'm a fan of this kind of thing. If you want it as a service, better help is a good way to go. It's easy, private, affordable, available worldwide. Check them out at betterhelp.com-slash-lex. That's betterhelp.com-slash-lex. This episode is also brought to you by Arnet, a nutrition supplement and fitness company.

They make alpha brain, which is a new tropic that helps support memory, mental speed, and focus. I take it when I need extra help for a deep work session. The first one in the day usually, when I know there's going to be a two, three hour segment of time where I'm going to have to think deeply about a problem. So whether that's designing a project for programming or doing the actual detailed programming debugging stuff or thinking through more idea level stage of a project through that to maintain focus to maintain sort of

mental speed that horsepower that's That requires effort and sometimes I'll take alpha brain to help me out in this effort Anyway, go to LexFreedman.com slash on it to get up to 10% off alpha brain. That's LexFreedman.com slash on it to get up to 10% off alpha brain that'slexfreedman.com slash on it. This episode is also brought to you by A sleep and it's pod pro mattress. It controls temperature with an app, it's packed with sensors, and it can cool down to as low as 55 degrees on each side of the bed separately. There are very few things I enjoy in life more than a good power nap. Andrew Huberman is a fan of this power nap.

I think Matt Walker, not so much. That's the great nap debate. Maybe I'll do many, many episodes on the nap debate. Good for you or do they rob you of a full-night sleep? For me personally, I think, um, naps reinvigorate my body and mind, not even like a full night sleep can. It just resets everything and I really really really enjoy them

and I enjoy them the most on a nice A sleep pod pro cover. You can get one of those if you go to a sleep.com slash lux and check out their pod pro cover and save 200 bucks and check out. A sleep currently ships within the United States, Canada, and UK, that's a sleep.com slash Lex. This is the Lex Freeman podcast, and here is my conversation with Sky, 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 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

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. You know your history, and we all know that deeply embedded in the Geneva Convention's 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 is 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 disgusts me that the laws in place but it won't be enforced by the international bodies and the nation states that make up the international community. So when the starvation is a result of human actions, human decisions that it'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 and had to lay our head on the sidewalk for a couple nights. I think we would take 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. That's immediate for all of us to understand what that means to go hungry. I'm not sure we're gonna sort of martial the global community to solve it. I did just that by the way, faster for three days recently. There's fundamentally different, I think,

because the thing that would be terrifying to me is not the fast thing, but the hopelessness at the end of the fast. Like, I wouldn't know when the next meal is coming. I always had the freedom to have the meal. The fear, not just your own ability to eat and survive, but your families. There's the 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 leaders in in as a weapon of war that is especially painful. So how can we? How can we help? What are the ways to help? How do we alleviate this suffering? Well, I think on the you know, I think on the humanitarian front, we have to be

aggressive and attentive and intervening in significant ways. And I think on the political front, we have to hold players accountable for their actions. So the leaders that start the war. So when you you say we have to speak up about the The decisions and the humans making those decisions. Yeah, the lead to the situation. Yeah, 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 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. When she was born, she was born into a world with no breast milk, very little formula. So she was starved before birth. She was born into a world where she continued to be starved by a mother who herself was starved. I watched that child, her name is Asila, die in front of me. Asila had no chance for all those things we hope for for a child in this world. 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 was not starving. Her mother was being starved 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. 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's not to be done. And we'll talk about many cases like these throughout history and going on today. Let's talk about hunger ward. Yeah, let's dive in. 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 the conflict on Yemen specifically on civilians.

And we document it 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 Emirates 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 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 the purpose of conversation who is doing causing suffering in the world in the situation Well who started the war why

and then of course the roots of war go back in history. But if we let's start 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. In the case of the status quo in Yemen right now, it's a completely

asymmetrical war. And so the Saudi coalition, which is made up of primarily Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, the United States, France, Britain, supply and 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. When I was there, the sheer volume of airstrikes 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, Anzorala, also known as the Houdi Rebel Group. You know, 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, and that it's really a proxy role, war between Iran, who supports the Houthis nominally and the rest of the world. That's the Saudi narrative.

The reality is something all together different. While the Houthis do receive support from Iran, this is a war started by and sustained by MBS in Saudi Arabia. Quzm-BS. Muhammad bin Salman. And Quzi. He is the son of the ruler of Saudi Arabia. What's MBS? Muhammad bin Salman. And who is he? He is the son of the ruler of Saudi Arabia. What's his power?

I'm asking basic dumb question. He's the de facto ruler of the military. And he's controls the country several years ago, even though he on the surface is not the ruler 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 the... Yeah, so, you know, I've never met him and I likely will never meet him, hopefully.

But he is, I know a lot about him through his actions, sort of in the Meena region, Middle East and North Africa region. And he is one of three in my view as an American sitting here in the US, three people in the world that I think has caused such an incredible volume of misery and suffering and murder on this planet that I think if you 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 the world would be better off without. 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. And what I saw Assad as a as a ruler do to his own people. And Putin would be the third. Those three human beings are murderers on a scale murders on a scale beyond imagining on MBS. Are you able to think as a documentary filmmaker, as a human beings, 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 inside the mind of that man. So basically, to be 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. You know, 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, you know, live inside the body of the person that trying to study. And have it the character. Inhabit the person. Yeah. So you're able to do that or because you are also studying the people who suffer as a result, as a consequence of their actions, you just, just put them in a box and you say, I hate the person in that box. No.

Go into, 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, is every gradation of gray, right? My background is theater, like, and so I was trained long before I picked up a camera to inhabit other characters, right? My background is theater, like, 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 into 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 and BS and Putin, yeah, I can go there and think through how they came to be who they are, right, from afar, right. 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. I'm not an expert on any of them. You're a human being which makes you a partial expert on human nature because nobody's an expert. You're just as good as anyone else. Anybody who actually cares the camera and listens Anybody who actually cares the camera and listens and Observe others isn't especially an expert of human nature It was 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 stick on hunger ward. This lens that you've chosen to look at this is through a single, maybe you can speak to that. You've mentioned the starvation as a result of war. What is the documentary? What is the lens you've chosen to give the world a peak 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 a hunger ward, you know, they ask where the hope is, right? You read the byline earlier, the last hope. And what I try to focus on in many of my films, including Hunger Ward, is in the very difficult context of war as the cases in Hunger Ward in Yemen, 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, 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 Makiya Maji, a nurse practitioner in the north of the country at a small rural clinic, and another is Dr. A. Ed 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, maybe you can mention in Yemen, what are the numbers in terms of people in starvation, but from a perspective of a nurse practitioner or a doctor, you always have your 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 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. So we've been sitting here how long? 35 minutes or so? That's a good handful of children they've already passed away. So to overcome, 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 on the individuals on those those human beings in front of me. And I think that's exactly what Dr. Alcadek 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 in the north of the country. It's an incredibly rural clinic that she works at. 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 a specialty treatment of a 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 just because of sort of the gender dynamics in Yemen, there had to be a parent or a relative there

to stay with the child while they were at the clinic. And it was a male relative. And so 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 arrive.

So, you know, she's flexible. She finds solutions, rather than allowing the problems to deter solutions. One child at a time. Yeah, one child at a time. You mentioned that you saw a child die in front of you. So when you're filming this as a filmmaker, what's that like? Psychologically, philosophically,

Creatively as a filmmaker, as a storyteller. What do you do there? As a human and as a filmmaker? What's that whole experience like? Because you get to, like you said, you take it to the whole journey of a starving mother giving birth to a starving child. It's not something I want to film. It's not something that I certainly wanted to happen or seek out, 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, and to find some way if the parents wanted us to, to integrate that into this story we'd

bring back to a Western audience. And you know, I've filmed many difficult things over the years. And usually I really love filming. And I didn't love filming, Hunger Ward. It was not a process that I enjoyed on any way should perform, sadly, because of the content, because who wants to watch a child die in front of them, I don't. But I did, and I had to. And when that happened, I felt an incredible responsibility again to go deep, right?

To go deep with that family, to tell the story of this hospital with every sort of ounce of focus and talent that I could bring to the story because people should know that 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 There's there times you wanted to walk away Quit the telling of the story Come back to the United States where you can just appreciate the wonderful comfort you can have just sitting there and having food and freedom to do whatever you want, those kinds of things. There's not to be any other stays in a lot of places in the world. Well, that dynamic of survivors guilt on some level definitely exists.

One of the hardest things from in hunger board actually was eating, right? Because we were in these malnutrition clinics, they're called TFCs, 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, we're literally starving and the practitioners were trying to

bring them back to a state 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. 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 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 helped me appreciate, me appreciate the privilege I had. Everybody you take. With everybody.

Absolutely. And so I wouldn't call it guilt. It wasn't exactly guilt, but it was definitely mindfulness about... It's like meditate on the suffering of people who can't. That's right. Exactly. So that knowledge, it was catalytic in some way. 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. I am not static in that sense, right? And preformed. It's 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 Omeima, who's the 10-year-old girl who we showcase in Odin in the south of the country. And, you know, we were there when she was admitted to the hospital. And when she was admitted, you know, this 10-year-old old girl weighed 24 pounds and she could barely stand up. And 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 of weeks, we saw her change. We saw 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 I'll never forget there was a moment where 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? The shot's actually in the film. And so to see Omeema, this child who's starving, giving sustenance to a younger, more vulnerable child who is also starving, moved me deeply. So I saw her learn from the caregivers around her and as a human being as a filmmaker, I was incredibly inspired by Omeema.

That capacity for compassion is there. Even within a tenured girl who's starving. And so you asked what changed me. That's one moment, right? I rather than being crushed by such heavy content, it was actually the opposite where I came away inspired by a tenured girl. And, you know, I didn't anticipate that, but I didn't think that's what this content would do, but it's what it did. It reinforced for me, That's what this content would do, but it's what it did. 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 a ten-year-old girl taught me that a reinforcer for me. Were you able to feel the culture of the people, so the language barrier, were you able to break through the language barrier, the culture barrier, to understand the people, even suffering has a language of sorts, depending on where you are, where 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 in hard times. Yeah. It depends on the culture, of course. 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 of 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 understanding

within it about what it means to be human. That I just 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 and the other side of the language? I'd like to think so. I mean, as you noted, there are universals in life that transcend language. Suffering is suffering. Love is love. Compassion doesn't take place only through language.

It's through actions. So, was there language bear? Absolutely, right? Did we try to bridge that through other means and sort of universal emotions and experiences? Absolutely, that's one of the things I always think about when I'm filming is how do we distill down to universals, right?

Through imagery, right? Through the vocabulary universals, right? Through imagery, right? Through 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 as a visual or as a 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. So dynamic. I'm thinking about a woman named Solha 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, she's literally the gatekeeper at the door. So no one comes in unless Salha allows them to come in. But then she also is sort of like, the first point of contact for compassion in the ward. So 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 of compassion with the families. And so it's amazing to watch. And no language is needed to bear witness to this. And she also suffers because of that. And so at the near the end of the film, if you recall, when another child dies and the mother is wailing, we actually cut away to Saha, 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 callus 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. And maybe that's why she can do what she does. What lessons do you draw from other famines in history? So for me personally, one that's touched my family and one of the great famines and histories in Ukraine, hall of mor, in the 30s, 32, 33, right? Which is all right. Yeah. You were stolen.

Yeah. 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 famines on this planet. I believe don't have to exist. And most of them, or at least a good number of them, are manufactured by the leaders that

choose to use famine as a weapon, right? And Ukraine is one of the obvious examples right now, you know, with siege tactics that are happening in different parts of the country. And, 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 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 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 gives me hope, right? And yet, I don't believe we've done enough. And I think the national community needs to do far more than we are both in Yemen, in Ethiopia, 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. The death, of course, is easy to enumerate, but it's the suffering that's the problem. Yeah. 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, and city-est process, right? Just like hunger, right? And yet, when you're hungry, it takes you over. It becomes the most important thing. It's just absolutely fundamental to life. It's like drawing breath.

And so, I really, before I filmed hunger ward, I struggled to sort of answer how we could creatively approach that because you know, someone's sitting in a clinic, right? Starving or being treated for starvation, you know, that's a pretty static scene, right? And what we found was that because of the volume of cases and because of the nature of sort of how quickly 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 it's a quiet suffering. Yeah. Like, and by the way, there's something about when I think about dog times, I mean, you'll hear me chuckle, for example. I don't know what that is. That's almost like, it's almost like you have to kind of laugh at, you can't help but laugh at like the injustice and the cruelty in the world.

Some of 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... It's humor. Yes, humor. It's like, the fucking man fucked me over again. And there's jokes all around that.

Yeah. and fuck me over again. And there's jokes all around that. 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 Gala's humor, right? It's 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. What are your thoughts about the humanitarian crisis and generally this 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 with displacement. The last entire trilogy I did was about displacement to a great extent, did a war. And this is a huge displacement of human beings, regardless of the cost. And that is going to sort of have a ripple effect 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 no other strain on sort of the global sort of resources that come into play to deal with refugees. You know, there was 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 I have always felt after working in Syria and Turkey that we completely missed our opportunity 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 leverage that ability. The fact that I talked with so many Syrians during the course of

during that project, who told me their stories of living in their house 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, you know, military targets only meant to kill and so fear. And early in the conflict, we could have stopped that. Before Russia got involved, we could have intervened and created a no-fly zone that we the United States, the United States, or coalition that we were a part of. And we didn't do it. And we could have. And I think that's an example where we have the military capable ability 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 of that power of words. 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 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 barrel bombs were dropping on civilian neighborhoods for months and months and months with no intent to do anything other than kill

Syrian civilians, that's an instant. I think where it might just to fight 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, as they second-guess themselves.

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 interested in maintaining positive ties with Saudi Arabia where oil flows from and so much influence because Saudi Arabia has so much influence throughout the meaner region. We want to keep that relationship tight despite sort of the more wounds 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. Democracy is good.

I have fallen victim to this narrative. I believe in it. I'm saying this jokingly, but not really. Because who knows the truth of anything in this world? I eat meat, factory farm meat, and I seem to not be intellectually and 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. Is that lessen suffering or increase the suffering from what you see in Yemen. Is it something that has to be healed across generations or can be healed a scale of months and years? I'm just a guy with a camera. Yeah.

But as a guy with a camera, I've seen a lot of things in a lot of places 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 and that's what drives and motivates me each day to raise the red flag through my films and say, listen, Biden, you campaigned for president in part on a platform that said that we would regain our prominence on the moral stage of the world, and that we would prioritize a moral paradigm over relationships with authoritarian regimes,

Saudi Arabia being one. And yet, when the CIA report came out that clearly articulated in detail that MBS was responsible for Kishoggi's murder and for cutting his body into pieces and probably burning it in the backyard of the embassy. 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 make MBS? What if he'd done something else and actually done what he said he was going to do, which was make him be it? What if he would Remove the ability for MBS to fly to the United States, for example. Now that's a sanction. All right. That's a sanction

That's individual and concrete and would be hugely embarrassing for MBS. That would have been by it and saying This is unacceptable behavior 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 give you a stage here at least, 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 game and ship, right, often falls into maintaining relationships, like with NBS and Saudi Arabia, rather than doing the right thing. Rather than as 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. It becomes aspirational for other leaders 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 space anymore. And sanctions I think need to be concrete and individual to some in addition to the larger scope, but when they're concrete and individual, I think often they're felt in a different way. You mean felt obviously by the individuals and so the ripple effects of that obviously by the individuals. And so the ripple effects of that is might have the power to steer the direction of nations. Because of the nature of authoritarian regimes, right? There are more.

Individuals have so much power. Exactly, right. So, you know, if Putin is, you know, put on trial on the hey at some point, or at least there's the threat of that, now that's likely never to happen, of course, because someone has to be in custody to go on trial, and he's never going to allow that to happen. But just knowing that danger exists is going to change his travel plans in the future. In BS, not being able to fly to the US, he's going to change his travel plans in the future, right? MBS, not be able to fly to the US, he's gonna 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 guys couple cameras. Couple cameras. I have work a couple mics too You got a couple of my couple cameras robot over here when you can't when you can't beat him with quality bring the quantity

That's right So to me that's also an also an interest partially because I also speak Russian 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, 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, Warren Ukraine, but also what's going on in Yemen, Syria, and other places in the world. I mentioned North Korea. That's a super interesting one. Hard to bring cameras along.

China, like in Canada, the truckers, there's all kinds of fascinating things happening in the world. So you as a scholar of human suffering and human flourishing, how do you choose, how to tell the story? How do I choose a story, how do I choose? Both the story and how I assume those are coupled So how do you choose which story to tell and how do you choose how to tell that story? Yeah, well in terms of how to how to choose which story

You know, it's it's a bit of a mystery potion for me, frankly. Um, I, I go off and 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 from American culture Lex 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 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 as 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 just 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 marshalling 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 intent I create each film with.

Now how I choose each story, that's the magic potion piece of it, right? And 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 in the last film. 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's usually 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 I want to learn more about. Before I talk to you about Syria and lifeboat. You mention the camera's the best weapon. Maybe just... Well, it can't take out a tank. Right, but it's a good second. Yeah.

Top three. Yeah. I love the humor throughout this. I really appreciate it. We're talking about such dark topics. Yeah. It resets the mind in a way that allows me to think. So thank you. As a as a filmmaker, almost want to talk about the technical details. How do you choose to shoot stuff?

Or again, so maybe you can explain to me our work with incredible folks that care about lenses and equipment and so on. I tend to be somebody that just wants to kind of go as like a gorilla shooting. Like not plan too much, just go with Gritty. I'm trying to come up with words that sound positive. Do a positive spin in what I'm trying to do.

But Gritty, don't over plan, use like we had a big discussion if you see this light. It's on a stand that's a very ghetto stand. Yeah. It's in your sandbag on that, man. Exactly. So no, no, see, no sandbag 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 fall. But the danger live under that danger, embrace that danger. Love it. Because that thing is easier to transport than a heavier one. Sandbag, that's extra weight.

So if you keep, like, people tell me, there's the right way to do stuff. Like, here's these giant cases with all the kinds of padding for transporting stuff. I transport most of the equipment in a garbage bag. So that's just a preference because that's somehow that chaos allows me to ignore all the stupidity of loving the equipment and focusing on the story. So that said, I've never shot anything like worthwhile. That said, I've never shot anything like worthwhile. Like, there is power to the visual. Yeah, 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 moments you can capture, a lens, a camera can do magic with that. 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 the biggest hurdle to the story is getting there, being there in the room or being there on the boat while the crisis is unfolding. And that access typically is really nuanced and difficult to gain 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. I can't have a boom mic over a scene.

I want, and 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 caretaking is active and ongoing all the time. You don't want to interrupt that moment. So that informs how I do things. So we go fleet and nimble and small. Those are all really good words for...

But it's logistical on the one hand, it's also a creative choice. So when we film Tunger Ward, it's two people are filming an entire film, right? Me and my director of photography. That was the two people on the room. Two people on the room. Yeah, that's it, the whole film, right? We had a field producers well in these part of the country,

but in terms of camera, it's just two people. And we're doing everything and we have lenses that are long enough that we don't have to move to capture the film. So we can tuck into a corner sometimes, right? So just what's long mean? That means they're standing farther away and they can zoom lens. 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 a zoom lens, maybe a 105 at the long end, I can tuck into a corner and just film from 15 feet away and have to get right up on someone. So you'd less like to interrupt the scene and you can become the fly on the wall sometimes. So I'm very intentional about that piece of it, so that 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. Part of the storytelling is to be in the room.

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, it's hard as Hunger Ward and Lifeboat were to film and 55 from Syria. The getting there piece of it for the last two was much harder. Yeah, and it's also, it's a creative act.

It's, I don't know if it is for you, but it's the kind of people you talk to it's 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. 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, it builds and builds and builds and builds. Builds on itself. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, part of the thing, even saying, talking about some of these leaders and conversations with them, it's almost like steering your life into the direction of the difficult of like taking the leap. And if you're a good human being and a lot of people know who you are as a human, like not as a name, but as really who you are, 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, to be in the room, the journey to be in the room, 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, especially, I mean, the documentary you get one take. Yeah, you can't say, hey, you reset, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Ah, that is so interesting. Is you are 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 once you have that lived experience for me, because it's once you have that lived experience for me, it's moving. It moves me to bear witness to these inspiring people under difficult circumstances. And 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 live tension, right? That live tension of the privilege that I have here in the US. 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, that's catalytic for me. Like, I think that that 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. Before I'm gone. Could you speak to the getting access? before I'm gone. Could you speak to the getting access? Is this just, you know, is there interesting stories of how a weird or funny or profound ways that led you to get access to the room?

Each one is a different adventure. And it's definitely an adventure. Everyone's an adventure, yeah. The probably one of the easiest ones I ever had in the recent past was for 50 feet from Syria, where, you know, I literally broke my hand in a bicycle race. And after many months of trying to get 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 just started talking about it. And after, you know, he looked at my hand in the first five minutes, he's like, yeah, you need surgery.

All right. Oh, 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. So it's supposed to be a 15 minute appointment or so. And we talked 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 because he then contacted me later and said, Sky, I am going back to this 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 war were completely different. And I had to really work hard to gain access to those stories.

So you intentionally thought like what I want to get access to the story and then what are the different ideas? And they often might involve a doctor or a dentist or just being, being maybe intentionally and aggressively open to experiences that lead you into the room. So it's funny you mentioned the doctor because I have similar experiences now. I've just gotten access to all kinds of fascinating people in the same way. You're all around us. They're all around way. You should all around us. 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. 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 beer or drink or just fall in love or you share trauma together, you go through a hard time together and those little sticky things connect us humans.

And if you just keep yourself open and 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 film 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. I've always been a slow-burned human being.

I would never hit a home run, but I hit a first, a single to first, and then I'd hit another single to first. I ran a marathon when I was 18, and I think that is illustrative of sort of how my career has been. I just keep going 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 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 make a little better film the next time.

How do you gain people's trust? For example, there's a line between journalists and documentary filmmakers. Nobody really trusts journalists. Exactly. But a documentary filmmaker, of course, I'm joking, have joking. I don't know which percentage is joking, but some truth. But documentary filmmaker is a kind of storyteller and artist.

And somehow that's more trustworthy. Because you're on the same side in some way. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. Is there something to be said and how you gain the trust of people to gain access? You just try to be a good human being. Is there something to be said and how you gain the trust of people to gain access. You just, are you just try to be a good human being?

Is there something to be said there? Well, so I do draw distinction between journalism and filmmaking because I think you're right. They're different. And there are some filmmakers who do you to sort of the journalism tenants of who are aware of why Theron balanced on both sides, right? Make sure everyone has a voice. I don't. If you say, Theron balanced, you're rarely either fair or balanced. Yeah. I've seen that with journalists. They journalists often, unfortunately, in my perspective,

sorry, to interrupt you rudely and go on a rant, but 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 who have some degree of evil on them. Well, we all have an agenda, right? I think anything we do, whether it's like to seek truth or you know some larger principle. I always have an agenda. Like I chose to work with civilians and and caretakers and Yemen on hunger ward rather than to go interview MBS, right? That's what I'm interested in is bringing that to the world, right?

That's what I'm interested in is bringing that to the world. But in terms of building relationships and trust, it's really, I think, about transparency as much as anything else and going in in a collaborative sense. So, I don't think 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. That's beautiful. And it's based on relationships, right? You have to build relationships without the human beings, however you can.

And that takes time. And it takes listening. And it's active. So I've talked about the notion of consent before which which you know is so important in nonfiction film and you know I hue to this idea that you know you don't just slide a piece of paper and from someone I release form and have them sign it right and then you're done. Now 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 already aiming for, which is why yesterday I got a bunch of photos from Dr. Alcidic 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 continues on and probably will for many years to come.

So that 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. Cameras lenses. Yeah. Do those how much do those matter you mentioned director of photography. What what's your? You mentioned director of photography. What's your, how much do you love the feel,

the smell of equipment that does the visual filming? You know, there's some people, they're just like, they love lenses. How much do you love that, or versus how much do you focus on the story or the access and all this kind of stuff? I'm not a tech geek, but because during the bulk of my career, I've worked as a director photography myself for other people in order to pay the bills over the years. You know, I know the technical side of it because 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 film and cinema is and should be visually driven and not verbally driven, I want the best tools possible within my means, right? And within the logistical ability of the project, because we have to go 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 $100,000 lens. So if I give you a trillion dollars. A trillion dollars. Yeah. Wow. Unlimited. There's still huge constraints that have nothing to do with money. Yeah. Like you just said. So what, what cameras would you use?

You know what I do with the trillion dollars? I can do a lot of the trillion dollars. It only allows 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 trillion is I wouldn't invest in it. Well, I guess I would invest in current. I would increase capacity to do more films. What I would do with the challenge is I wouldn't invest in it. Well, I guess I would invest in current. I would increase capacity to do more films.

What I would do. So as I would buy basically the perfect little, you know, many 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 on, but the actual setup would remain small and nimble. Yeah. And what about lighting? Do you usually use natural light? Do you ever do?

I mean, sorry for the technical questions here, but highlighting the drama of the human face. Yeah. That's the visual. That's art. That's like to reveal reality. Yeah. And its deepest is art. And do you use lighting? Well, lighting is such a big part of that. Do you ever do artificial lighting? Do you try to do natural? You know, the best lighting instrument in the world? It's the sun. At the right moment of the day. And so I predominantly use natural light 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 tube kit. That's just three instruments that you can charge with the USB, because electricity is often a major issue where we go. So there's just three little two blights with magnetic backs that if we find 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 always bring a reflector to, you know, just to shape natural light as well in ways, but it's about shaping rather than producing life for us. Got it. As we sit surrounded by black curtains in complete natural life. So just just so you know, this room 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, how much of the work is done in the edit? That's another question. I'm curious about. And how much do you 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 then in the edit is where most of the storytelling happens? I've developed this sort of mental paradigm for myself over the years that speaks to that. 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 entire vision of what a film is going to be before I shoot it. So I have this entire vision of what a film is going to be. And sometimes it can be pretty specific, like I'll think through the scenes if I know

the locations and everything. Now, how this idea of what I'm going to create, right? And then I'm there filming, right? And always, without fail, reality is something all together 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 crap. So I have to adapt. I have to evolve my approach.

And then embrace what is actually occurring with the people who are actually doing it, and then re-envision. So that re-envision is very active during the entire filming process. And so that's the second creation, that's the rethinking and revisolizing 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 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 is 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 the second time, rather, is, wow, now I thought we'd filmed this, but actually 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 is this like a daily process? So what I do, my process is that if it's a really difficult project, I'll take a break before I go through this. Just for healing, you know, and some space away and fresh eyes and usually that's about a month. And then once I reengage, I reengage

whole hog, I reengage fully and I review every single frame. And as I do that, I create a spreadsheet. And for Hunger Ward, that spreadsheet was, I don't know, 1500 lines long or something where it's basically log notes. And I watch every scene and I take notes, and 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, 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, or I'd be trying to create something that I can't really create. So I think that those are the three creations for me. That's so cool to know what we have, just to lay it all out and to load it into your mind.

Because this is the capture of reality we have. It's a very kind of scientific process too. Because in science, you collect a bunch of data about a phenomena. And now you have to analyze that data. But now your phenomena is long gone. Yeah, right. Now you just have the data. And just the data.

And you have to write a paper about it. Like analyze the data. It's the similar things. You have to like load it all in worth the story. How how do you That last probably profound piece of Doing the editing like in your mind like what? 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. 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 probably coin that. Yeah, that's pretty good. Creative scientific processes. I don't know what we should probably coin that. Yeah, that's pretty good. Creative scientific processes for something like that.

But then you actually do the edit and then you watch that's also iterative in the sense. Because maybe when you have a film, that's 20, 30, 40 minutes, or if it's featuring, do you ever have it where it sucks? Like, it's not a stage where it sucks. Like a stage where it right, right? It's like, no, this is not hot. This is not what I was meant.

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 are they like dance partners? They're dance partners, 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? Because I think craft is incredibly foundational, right? to creating a powerful story. I'm sorry to interrupt, but when you say craft, do you mean just the raw technical, the

director of photography, the filming aspect, is it the storytelling, is it 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 think at least in nonfiction, you know, 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 an 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. Well, yeah, I mean, I wasn't an actor, but I had to act, I had to know the craft of acting because I was in the theater, you know, to work with you.

Did you love it, though? Did you love, did you love acting? The theater? Yeah, theater. The first, yeah, as an undergraduate, yeah. But then I learned pretty quickly that I was pretty bad at it, or at least not very good, and that my skills lay elsewhere in more sort of behind the scenes and shaping a story.

When you started taking a class, but also telling stories as a director, you quickly realized that you're pretty good at this or was it a grind? That's a good question, Alex. I think I definitely knew right away that it was more my wheelhouse, right? And I think part of that was because I grew up in sort of a world of imagination.

And I think that active imagination is 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 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 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 technical 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, I began shooting local commercials for money. For money. Yeah. So you're 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? Well, I was trying to make money, right? Right out of grad school just to pay the rent. And that's a forcing function to, I mean, I personally love having my back to the wall or financially your school.

Yeah, that's a succeed. So that's nice. I mean, I lived out the trunk of my car for a couple of years after grad school, just freelancing, you know, just like, but that couple of years really helped me learn fast because I had to learn fast, you know. So I did a couple of,

I did a couple of orages 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 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 do most of the work yourself. Won't one man, one man bad. Yeah. The second voyage I had 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 nonfiction? I'm asking for a friend. Yeah. Some 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 docs, 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'm doing a film this summer that's a scripted piece where we'll probably have 25 crew people. Oh, wow. Yeah, so it's completely different, different endeavor altogether.

But doing it yourself, what do you think about that? Even though you have that trillion dollars, I have that trillion dollars again. Sweetie, you can write that check before I leave. I will. Great. I've never seen a check for that. Figures, we've seen how many zeros is that? I read them so often. I've lost track or the United States government sure

has had to write them off. Okay. Anyway, I mean, like, is there an argument? Can you steal man the case for single person? You know, not for me. Not for me and here's why. What I found is that by being a team of two filming with a field producer, by two people filming, it allows us to double our footage, first off. 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, sorry to keep it dropping? How much interaction into play there? Sometimes the director of photography is in another room. A film may differ, seeing if it makes sense. Sometimes we're cross shooting in the same room, right? It just depends on the needs of the moment.

So we come back with double footage is one thing. But as a director, and given how access is sometimes shaped by the event so that we can only, in lifeboat, for example, a rescue operation may only happen three days, right? So you want as much footage of it 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 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 director rather than just an image acquireer. Yeah, because there's also, I don't know how distracting is, you've obviously done it for years, but setting stuff up, it preoccupies your mind, like pressing the record button, 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, is a documentary called A Woman Captured Shot and Hungry 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 incredible filmmaking, and it was a single human being who created that film with a collaborator or a subject.

So it can be done. It's just not how I work best. Yeah. How much personally would the other person, how important is the relationship with them outside of the filming? Like with the director of photography? The director of photography, say, like how much drinking and if you don't drink, whatever the equivalent of that is, they have to do together.

How much soul searching or is it more like two surgeons getting together? 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 jazz bands go well together. They're both good, they have both good with fingers. Exactly, but I'd rather maybe not play in jazz while they operate on me. Yeah, but but I think for me, 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 you have a lot of choices ahead of you

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 fix duration. How much you said shaping, because it is nonfiction. But I feel like there's so many ways to tell the same nonfiction that is bordering on fiction. Yeah, it's as well. It's storytelling.

And how much shaping do you see yourself as doing? Like how important is is your role how you tell the story? I suppose the question I'm asking is how many ways can you really screw this up? Every day you can screw it up. I mean, that's really the Where I think what you're asking about is really the ethos of documentary filmmaking, right? I Allow a lot of things to guide my choices. One of them being, am I being fair, right? Not balanced, right? But am I being fair to what I'm witnessing?

There's a camera capturing in a fair way the truth of the reality. Some fund the most. And it also speaks to consent, right? Am I being fair in a sense of, do I have active consent in this moment, right? Regardless whether I have a sign piece of paper, I always find some way to document it, whether it's just direct address to camera or, you know, a translator release. So there's, if you have an interesting little, so they say something to the camera that they consent or they sign the thing. Yeah, so for example, the large broadcast companies have this formalized process where they

present a piece of paper, and the subject reads it and they sign it and then you have permission, and that's irrevocable. So it'll hold up in court. That's not how I operate, right? And so it's it's just for example, that doesn't work if someone's a literate and can't read that piece of paper, 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 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 just 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. Yeah. I hate a paper's I hate papers and lawyers because they they exactly for that reason. Yeah, okay, great, but you should

be focusing 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 a woman captured, where'm sure you can't answer it, but I will force you. What are the top three documentaries of all time? Short or feature length? No, not this is not your opinion. This is objective truth. Maybe the top one.

What's the greatest? Let's see, much of the penguins. That's probably number one for me. Really? No, it's kidding. I don't know. I do seem to, the metaphor of penguins, huddling together in hard, cold,

like in the harsh conditions of nature, that there's something that's kind of beautiful. I don't love all nature documentaries, but like something about March of the Penguins. I think Morgan Freeman. Yeah, he narrated it. Narrated it. So maybe everything just any documentary with Morgan Freeman. I'm a sucker for that. Warner, Herzog, the life in the tiger, the simple people.

I love Grizzly Man. I love Grizzly Man. I think that's one of his best works, you know? Yes, I think that's Joe Rogan's favorite, favorite documentary. Yeah. It's both comedy and, I mean, it's... Tragedy comedy.

Tragedy comedy, yeah. Yeah. Is there something that says that 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 way to say that they're objectively, you know, the best for you.

Document is 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 block, actually. So aquarella by Kosokovsky, Dr. Kosokovsky, is one of my favorite, there's a couple years old now, which is sort of a meditation on the place water has on our planet, none our lives. I think a woman captured that I mentioned,

which was shot in Hungary. There's a feature length one. Both are feature lengths. Yeah. It is just brilliant. And it I think has yet to find distribution here. But it's the perfect example of what they call Verite, or direct nonfiction filmmaking. A European woman, this is the synopsis, a European woman has been kept by a family as the domestic slave for 10 years, drawn 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, I didn't start that way,

but during the course of the story, the filmmaker 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 herself from slavery and become a free woman. I wonder, sorry, on a small tangent before we get to number three, like, Echorus is interesting too. How often do you become part of the story, or the story is different

because of your presence? Like, 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 for 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 that sort of examines the place of the state 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 docker.

So, again, Russian film making, it's really quite good and powerful. The fourth one would be a Frederick Weisman film, Tidicke Falles, which was filmed in the US decades ago, basically the bowels of an insane asylum, more mental health institution. And I bring up Wiseman because he is really the Godfather, so to speak, of direct cinema or cinema verite. And 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. And I believe that that's how I should be as a nonfiction filmmaker, that I was there only to bear witness, to observe, and not to intervene in any way, shape, or form. And that was the sort of foundation for how I operate for many, many years. And then some things happened. So one of those things that happened was I filmed lifeboat. And during the course of filming lifeboat, which covered rescue operations in

the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya, in the first three days of that rescue mission, we came upon over 3,000 people, asylum seekers, floating in flimsy rafts in the water. And we were on the Zodiacs, and 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 drown 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 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, you know, if I was Wiseman, according to his paradigm, then we should have just filmed. And I didn't anticipate that moment beforehand. I had, you know, 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 think of it as a being, a human being first and 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 documentaries. I tend to see that as really beautiful.

Like, like the meta piece of it? Yeah, like, yeah, just put yourself into the movie a little bit because like break that yeah, yeah, just just put yourself into the movie a little bit because like break that Third fourth whatever the wall is is Realized that there's a human behind the camera too for some reason me as a fan as a viewer That's enjoyable to I think there's a real authenticity there Behind the story especially with these hard stories that you're doing, that there's a human being struggling to like 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 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 is. What's the belly button doc is? Naval gazing, right? Where That's what I call them. What's the belly button doc is? Naval gazing, right? Where there's a sort of a narcissistic filmmaking

where someone just studies their own place in the world. Right? I think, yeah. I think my, you know, I'm more concerned with how I can intervene, right? Yeah. Well, you're trying to really, deeply empathize. Yeah.

So like, if you deem empathize, who am I? I don't want to center myself in these stories. It's just 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 I think it's selfish and narcissistic to 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 all allow the audio to live of a question or during a conversation I'm having with someone so they can just hear how it's posed for example. And to me that's enough. Yeah. I do like moments when people recognize that you exist. They look at the filmmaker, past the camera.

And yeah, you ask the question in the interview or something like that. And they respond to that Yeah, like they respond to this like the 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 novel to reveal 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.

Of course there's all kinds of ways to do this. Let me, it was number five, by the way. Only I only gave you four. You get, you just stay at four. There's a short doc I like, I mentioned, they call the toxic pigs of Fukushima. I know. I know.

I apologize. I know. It's dark. It's dark though, right? It's great title. It's, it's no one's seen it, but it's great. Oh, 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 lifebook, because it's extremely, I don't, it's a really moving idea, just the fact that this exists in the world, 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 this refugees, the desperation of that, of trying to escape, towards a world that full of mystery, uncertainty, doubt, could be hopeless at times. And you're willing to do a lot.

For your own survival, for the survival of your family and all those kinds of things. That's kind of the human spirit. And you just captured it in lifeboat. Can you tell me the story behind this film as you started to already tell? Can you tell me what is it about? So lifeboat really seeks to sort of lift up and showcase the asylum-seeker crisis in the Mediterranean when it was at its height in 2016. And it came to be for many reasons, but one of those reasons is colleagues in the NGO community really shared with me that when the borders between Greece and Turkey were shut down, that 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 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. And it was civil society based that tried to meet the needs of those asylum seekers 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. 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 I thought there was an inspiring story there, and as it turned out, there was.

Have you ever saved someone's life? Yes, 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 don't, I don't want to. I mean I certainly poured people all the water who couldn't swim. I don't want to, I mean, I certainly poured people all 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.

So, this is people coming from Libya 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 going back to this idea of access and how that's so fundamental to my approach. We were bound by the strictures of the rescue operation on this seawatch vessel, which was

30 meters long. And we were two of a crew of 15, 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 help, right? And so it was very active on multiple levels and we were making decisions each and every day that were not only filmmaking and creative decisions but also decisions about how to live that duality, right?

how to live that duality, right, of being a humanitarian and a filmmaker simultaneously. And the greatest example I can share of that was, or with my director photography in that project, Kenny Allen. He, Kenny's a big guy. It's like, it'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 zodiacs to pull people out of the water, because he could literally with one arm reach down and just oftentimes pull someone out, right? one arm, reach down and just oftentimes pull someone out, right? Whereas usually you would take two or three people, right? And so when we were at the height of triage and there were people in the water all over and rafts were sinking, 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's your camera? And he didn't know. He had no idea where his camera was. 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 that 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 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, 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, it can be. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, you know, yeah, absolutely.

And we don't want to become, I don't want to become clinical in my phone, certainly. Let me ask you a strange and perhaps edgy question. So some filmmakers believe it's justified to break the rules in order to tell a powerful story. Warner Herzog, to break the rules in order to tell a powerful story. Warner Herzog, I read this somewhere, teaches young filmmakers to pick locks and forged documents and so on.

No, I didn't know that. Interesting. What do you think about that? Bending the rules and service of telling a story. You would of course never break the law. But is there, does that 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 rule of law is not like 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 that 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 contend with that on what are the rules I can break or should break to keep to the spirit of the story? I think if you have other rules just, then why are they 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? We would have been caught up for three hours at least, negotiating over our equipment, and eventually paying a

bribe to get it through. That's just reality in a place like Yemen. So of course, knowing that, having talked to colleagues who had taken that path previously, I took a different path. We hire our fixer beforehand to sort it out beforehand. Rather than spending three hours of our time and paying a series of bribes, but 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? Well, several questions are all that are you ever afraid for your life when you're filming in a war zone? Is there any way to Lesson 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, 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. Regarding fear, yeah, of course. I mean fear is a natural human emotion, right? And I think we have a weird mindset, this sort of heroic mindset surrounding fear in the US, which I don't pay tribute to. I believe as a natural human and emotion, it's an alarm bell that I need to pay attention to, right? 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. Does you think as a documentary filmmaker, the fears are really good signal for potentially a good thing to do because there's a story there. So it's fears and indicator that you shouldn't do it or is it an indicator that you should do it. It's probably an indication you should do it, right? And strangely, I think that's why I think that's if there's something unusual about the work I do in some part, 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, 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 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, because of the humanitarian nature of you, we're able to avoid all such friendly conversations, or are you often in making friends with our I try to avoid the friendly police people all over the world as much as possible. Um, but in, 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 in the situation. For example, working in Northern Yemen, you couldn't film for five minutes 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 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 was early in the Syrian uprising and we returned to the Syrian Turkish border with a Syrian American orthopedic surgeon who was volunteering, operating on refugees as they flowed across the border from Syrian to Turkey. And it was an attempt at the time before a lot of films had come out about the conflict to really

show again the effects of the war on civilians. You've heard me echo that sentiment multiple times now, but it, you know, people knew there was a major conflict in Syria, but didn't really understand the form that that was taking and the impact it was having. And so we embedded into the, at the time it was the only clinic in Turkey that was sanctioned by the Turkish government to treat Syrian refugees. And so we filmed there with surgeons as they operated on more victims. And we also went into Syria into some of the camps as well. We filmed there with surgeons as they operated on more victims. And we also went into Syria into some of the camps as well.

So in this film, there's a man across the border of a day to retrieve the wounded and fare them safety and care. And you also mentioned about heroism in the United States. 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 shinlar, right? Because he was human being who of his own volition, volition, an honest pain in 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. 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 the guards in the nomans land between the Syrian guards and those who lived in 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 every day he would bring these guards food and build relationships with them. 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 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 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 aspirational for me, right? 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 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 that, you know, the whims of war test people in those ways, right? That they ask of you, things that you may not even know were going to be asked of you.

And then it speaks to who you are fundamental as a human being. They reveal who you are as a human being, just as you said. Let me ask a kind of the stupid technical question about publications and movies and so on I've been Recently becoming good friends with Thomas tall who's the producer His company legendary find it some of the big sort of blogbuster films and so on and so obviously money is part of filmmaking Yeah, it's filmmaking. But also the release of movies and me as a consumer, you know, 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, 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 YouTube Hulu Netflix. I don't know what other services there are HBO Paramount Paramount plus Anyway, there's all these platforms. Spotify now. I understand they want to create pay walls and so on. It makes sense, but I'm a huge fan of openness, and I'm really kind of torn by this whole thing.

Anyway, that's a discussion for perhaps another time. But 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 to watch it. Why is it so hard? Well, lifeboat is streaming free on the New Yorker. Yes, I saw that, but it's the which is interesting. That doesn't make any sense. And then also hunger ward is on Paramount Plus, but also Pluto TV. It's also streaming free. Yeah. So you can either go through a paywall or you can watch it with ads with big max interspersed,

big max sometimes. The contrast really, well, it really reveals the power of the documentary. 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, you have to use, you have to think. And you have to chase a particular rule. You have to chase it. Yeah, yeah. I guess from an economics standpoint, the answer to 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 US, which is exactly why, people want to watch animal rescue shows, right? Here in the US, 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'll push back on that. So there's TikTok and you could say, well, look, humans just

There's TikTok and you could say, well, look, humans just want to watch really short content because they seem to be addicted to that thing. That's partially true. But they also watch two, three, four, five hour podcasts. And on TikTok? No, there's different platforms for that. It's a place called YouTube. I'll teach you about it. Okay. Yeah, there's different platforms for that. This 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 dumb, simple, frictionless access. The frictionless access is a really important thing. 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 or Put your email

It's it's just not it creates a It It prevents you to enjoy the thing you would really enjoy and you know you would enjoy but your base are human Nature prevents you from enjoying because you can just open up tech doc and keep scrolling. So 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 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, then I'm gonna put all my films on YouTube, right? I mean, as soon as you write me that check for a trillion dollars when I walk out of here, then I'm gonna put all my films on YouTube, because then I won't have to worry about, you know, selling them in order so I can make the next film, because, you know, film is not

just an art, it's also an industry, right? And that tension between the two is a constant interplay that is a reality for me. So I always have to think about how can I access the largest audience, but also go out and shoot the next film. So that longevity question is also an issue 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. Yeah. And 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, I would just take a flyer on my films, right, where I would just say, this meets the so-wet threshold. This is a story that has to be told, and I want to tell it. And then I could just go shoot it, and usually on credit, usually on a credit card, right? So based on a belief that lifeboat was done that way.

Yes. 50 feet from Syria was done that way. 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, not intended to stay broke, right? But based on a foundational belief that if I bring to bear all of my sort of, you know, quiver of creative arrows to it, right,

that I can create something of value, right, in the world, but hopefully also 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 for that film.

Yeah, take risks in this life. It's just going to pay off, which reminds me of, let me ask you, I already asked you for advice about, about a filmmaker, how to win an Oscar. Well, I have a one-and-a-n 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. 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 living a life worth living? What advice would you give them about career or maybe just life in general? How do other life they can be proud of? I don't know how you're going to react to this given given sort of your expertise, but I would say Oh, put down the smartphone. Yes, step away from the monitor. Right, because real life is not a screen. Yeah, I believe that sort of the foundational skills which are which are conducive and important to success

foundational skills which are conducive and important to success Aren't necessarily those technical skills which we're going to learn and trade schools or or university I think them They're more foundational than that. They're learning how to interact In listen with humans with humans. Yeah, it took to really see and listen right and observe and observe right and how to step out of your door and if the electricity goes out right and your 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, then a whole lot of people have 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 everything rests upon those. So I would say learn those foundation, 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, observing, and writing is kind of the equivalent of listening, 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 by 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, I'm, we mentioned fear. I'm being an introvert. I'm very afraid of people, but I'm drawn to them. I'm fascinated by them because of that. Yeah, enjoy listening to them. Totally. And 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 a little bit of spark of inspiration early on in life that stand out for your memory. I was given the profit by Kileu DeBron when I was a graduation president 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 returned to it all the time because there's wisdom there, you know, but but there's many, many books. So fiction and nonfiction, what connects with you usually in the past, when the first, I read mostly nonfiction most of the time. 10 points is a book I love a lot. What is it?

What is 10 points? 10 points is, 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 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 nonfiction. So that's for the Princess bride. Had to mention, it's an outlier. No, no, the seven

habits of highly effective people. Yes. I read that in my early 20s. Yeah. And I found so many of the principles in that book. What are the habits from that one? Seek first to understand then to be understood is one of them, you know, the notion of proactivity is one of them. 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 concrete path that people jog and ride their bikes. And I was riding my bike on the PCH, and 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 corner, around the corner, and it was a car accident, a car crash. It was a multiple vehicle crash. And what had happened is that a Volvo had 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 line in the middle of the road was a body decapitated.

And there was another person from one of the cars lying in the Melder Road still alive. And then on the hood of the Volvo was this woman who had come to the windshield, just a mass blood everywhere, moaning back and forth. And a bystander ran into the mail of the road and started administering first aid to the person in line in the road. And I stood there watching this 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 going to 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 would be paramedics there within minutes 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. 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, into 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 experience of failure, what I framed is just human failure on my part, is foundational probably to my work. Like I don't want that to happen again, legs.

Like, 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? What's the meaning of your life, of individual human life, and broadly speaking, what is the meaning of life? Sky, for sure. No, boy. Yeah. For me, 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. When I was in theater and grad school, I directed a play called Shadowlands by CS Lewis. And there's a quote from that, it goes like this, we're like blocks of stone,

out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which heard 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, do you think about that? You think about the going part, your mortality. You ever think about that? You said, you don't have a death wish. You try to minimize risk. But eventually, it's going to be over.

Yeah, for all of us. Absolutely. I'll speak for yourself. Well, you've got to the plan to something. I tend to merge. I'm going to merge with robots. I mean, body, not not at all. Yes, for all of us, unfortunately, or fortunately, or who, who the heck knows. But do you pondering on mortality? Are you afraid of it? I live with my mortality knowing that it's fleeting,

that my life is fleeting, and that I'm going to go into the ground, just like everyone else, or maybe as ashes, you know. 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. I had it drives me to try to get as much done as I can before I go. Right? Yeah, so the knowledge of your death is a kind of dance partner. And you try to dance beautifully. Sky, you're an incredible human, 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 enjoy this conversation.

Thank you, thanks for having me, Lex, and thanks for doing what you do. Thanks for listening to this conversation with SkyFistJerault. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Ellie Wazal. 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 heresy, it's indifference. The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time. you