"we would come up to these rafts and these boats that were in really dire shape and people would be pushed off and people would jump off and people would fall into the water and um some of them couldn'..."

"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..."

"um you know your history um and we all know that you know deeply embedded in the geneva conventions post world war ii the intent of one of those articles was to ban the use of starvation as a weapon o..."

"personally yeah i think that if you and i sitting here didn't eat for three days um and had to you know lay our head on the sidewalk for a couple nights i think we would take you know hunger and homel..."

"your own ability to eat and survive but your families if there's loved ones that's the other thing i don't have i'm single so i feel like the worst suffering is watching somebody you love that you're ..."

"for their actions so the leaders that start the war so you when you say we have to speak up about the the decisions and the humans making those decisions yeah that lead to the stuff for example let's ..."

"she she you know she was not starving she her mother was being starved right because of the blockade over the country now who instituted that blockade mbs in saudi arabia with the reinforcement and so..."

"that you are you've been nominated for an oscar twice this is one of the times for a documentary can you please tell me what hunger ward the last hope between war and starvation is about hunger ward i..."

"continue so us complicity who are the bad guys now the world unfortunately cannot be painted in black and white of good guys and bad guys but for the purpose of conversation who is um doing causing su..."

"by air that the saudis use continuously to pummel northern yemen um when i was there uh the the sheer volume of air strikes is is hard to describe and we show the result of only one in the film really..."

"saudi narrative the reality is something altogether different while the houthis do receive support from iran this is a war started by and sustained by mbs in saudi arabia who's mbs muhammad and who is..."

"do you mind before i ask other questions mentioning the three oh yeah assad is one in syria and that comes out of an earlier project that i did in syria and turkey um and and what i saw assad as a as ..."

"you put put them in a box and you say i hate the person in that box that's going to move on this goes back to your black and white statement at the beginning right it's like the world as a whole of co..."

"that you've mentioned the starvation as a result of war what is the documentary like what is the lens you've chosen to give the world a peek at the results at the suffering that's a result of this war..."

"is makia maji a nurse practitioner in the north of the country at a small rural clinic and another is dr aida al-sadiq who is a pediatrician in the south of the country and so we chose to tell the sto..."

"right way to think and to approach these problems or can you actually make sense of the numbers speaking just as a human being i think the scale of suffering is so great in yemen that um i i think i'd..."

"makia for example i saw her in the north of the country it's an incredibly rural clinic that she works at so so it's like a magnet for all the cases in the north of the country people come from hundre..."

"yeah one shot at a time you mentioned that you saw a child die in front of you so when you're filming this as a filmmaker um what's that like psychologically philosophically creatively as a filmmaker ..."

"and and you know i i i've filmed many difficult things over the years and um usually i really love filming and i didn't love filming hunker ward it was not a a process that i enjoyed on any way she'll..."

"you know over a long period of time children lost the ability to eat normal food right and couldn't digest it and just you know were literally starving and the the practitioners were trying to bring t..."

"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 befor..."

"be treated by the nurses and the doctors in sadaka hospital and slowly over the course of a couple weeks we saw her change we start her start to sort of gain strength and start to recover and she also..."

"were you able to feel the culture of the people so the the language barrier be able to break through the language barrier or the culture barrier you know to understand the people you know um because e..."

"country and um you know we built international humanitarian law for a reason right many years ago and it continues to be written to this day and it's there to prevent what's happening in ukraine right..."

"there are certain kinds of things that captivate the global attention and it seems like starvation is not always one of them for some reason murder and destruction gets people attention more it's the ..."

"and so i i really before i filmed hunger ward i i struggled to sort of answer how we could creatively approach that because you know someone sitting in a clinic right starving or being treated for sta..."

"with it i mean i see this all the time like when you're struggling you can't feed your family you lost your home the last thing you have is jokes about humor yes humans it's like the fucking man fucke..."

"there's that that's gonna set up a whole nother strain on sort of the the global sort of resources that that come into play to deal with refugees you know there were 79 million displaced people on thi..."

"used for beyond just defending our borders is to is to save others with the privilege that that power affords what do you think about the power of the military versus the power of sanctions versus the..."

"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 ..."

"have on their own citizens and that's what drives my thinking on this um and and that's what drives and motivates me each day to raise the red flag through my films and say listen biden you um campaig..."

"ukraine um you know and been very vocal but there's so many instances we could talk about where i feel like um the the political gamemanship right often falls into maintaining relationships like with ..."

"authoritarian regimes yes right there there are individuals have so much power exactly right so you know um you know if putin is is you know put on trial in the hague at some point or at least there's..."

"top top three yeah i love the humor throughout this i really i really appreciate it it's making we're talking about such dark topics it resets the mind in a way that allows me to think so thank you as..."

"uh use like we had a big discussion if you see this light yeah um it's it's on a stand that's a very ghetto stand yeah you need a sandbag on that man exactly so no no see no sandbag and and like the t..."

"a lens a camera can do magic with that um i don't even know the question i'm asking you but how do both technical and philosophical how do you capture the visual power that you're after yeah so so man..."

"can zoom lens it's not a prime lens so it's not a fixed focal length right because a fixed focal length you have to move a lot more in order to capture action with with a zoom lens um you know maybe a..."

"it's everything it's like it builds it builds and builds and builds and builds on itself yeah yeah i mean part of the thing even saying you know talking about some of these leaders and conversations w..."

"a creative journey to be in the room i think that probably is i mean it's true even for fiction films probably is like everything that led to that like uh to be in the room the journey to be in the ro..."

"and yet i think that's why i keep doing these stories right because it's it's once you have that lived experience for me um it's moving it it moves me to bear witness to these um these these inspiring..."

"could you speak to the getting access is this just you know is there interesting stories of how um a weird or funny or profound ways that led you to get access to a room each one is a different advent..."

"probably the easiest one i could give you but it came out of this interesting moment very personal moment right lifeboat and hunger ward were completely different um and i had to really work hard to g..."

"everywhere yeah there's networks that connect people just through life you meet people you share a beer or a drink or just you fall in love or you um or you should share trauma together you go through..."

"this notion of incremental evolution that with each project i try to learn from it and take away lessons learned and improve my craft right and improve how i how i leverage that craft and improve how ..."

"fair or balanced yeah i've seen that with journalists journalists often unfortunately in my perspective sorry to interrupt you rudely and go on a rant but they want to do it they seem to have an agend..."

"um and it takes listening and it's active so it's it's i've talked about the notion of consent before which which you know is so important in non-fiction film and you know i hew to this idea that um y..."

"these kinds of films let me ask you about silly little details of filming before before we go to the big big picture stories um cameras lenses yeah do those how much do those matter you mentioned dire..."

"give you a trillion dollars a trillion dollars yeah wow unlimited yes there's still huge constraints that have nothing to do with money yeah like you just said yeah so what what cameras would you use ..."

"compact so for example i have this small little um tube kit that's just three instruments right that you can charge with the usb because electricity is often a major issue where we go so there's just ..."

"be um and and sometimes it could be pretty specific like i'll i'll think through the scenes if i if i know the locations and everything and i'll have this idea of what i'm going to create right and th..."

"vision for the film based on what's actually on the hard drive so you're is this like a daily process so what i do the fruit my process is that once if it's a really difficult project i'll take a brea..."

"piece of doing the editing like in your mind like what uh how to lay those things out well it's almost like the scientific process right i have a hypothesis a creative hypothesis right not a scientifi..."

"completely different different endeavor altogether but doing it yourself what do you think about that even though you i you have that trillion dollars oh i have that trillion dollars against write tha..."

"we can only something you know in lifeboat for example you know a rescue operation may only happen three three days right so you want as much footage as you can but the other piece of it that's really..."

"was a single human being who created that film with with um with a collaborator or subject so it can be done it's just not how i work best yeah how much personally with the other person how important ..."

"during a fixed duration how much you said shaping because it is non-fiction but i feel like there's so many ways to tell the same non-fiction that it's borderline on fiction yeah this is well it's sto..."

"actually that's an interesting little so they say something to the camera that they consent or they sign the thing yeah so for example you know i think the large you know broadcast companies have this..."

"i'm sure you can't answer that but i will force you uh what are the top three documentaries of all time short or feature length to you not this is not your opinion this is objective truth uh maybe top..."

"favorite uh uh favorite documentary yeah it's both comedy and and i mean it's tragic comedy tragic comedy yeah yeah is there something that stands out to you i mean i'm joking about like best somethin..."

"become a free woman i wonder sorry on a small tangent before we get to number three like icarus is interesting too how often do you become part of the story or the story is different because of your p..."

"and i when early in my career i really believed in what he expressed as the place of the verite filmmaker which is simply fly on the wall which is only observational nature right and and i believe tha..."

"moments like that that's beautifully beautifully put but i also think like you could be a human being in small ways too like silly ways and put a little bit of yourself in in documentaries i i tend to..."

"the world and you're behind that camera living that struggle and there's small ways to show yourself in that way as you know i i don't do that in a big way but you know i actually there are subtle mom..."

"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 allo..."

"right it's a great title it's it's no one's seen it but it's great it's it says what it sounds like yeah yeah it's exactly what it sounds like but really brilliantly executed well let me ask you about..."

"started to already tell um can you tell me what is it about so lifeboat um [Music] really seeks to sort of lift up and showcase the asylum seeker crisis in the mediterranean when it was at its height ..."

"because the eu wasn't doing its duty to um patrol those waters from a humanitarian standpoint and so the net result of that was that this whole sort of like humanitarian community sprung up um and it ..."

"story there and as it turned out there was have you ever saved someone's life as as a part of making these documentaries directly and directly i think you probably have countless lives but directly we..."

"decisions about how how to live that duality right of being a humanitarian and a filmmaker simultaneously and the the greatest example i can share of that was with my director of photography in that p..."

"um and he because he was so physically able and strong the head of mission um just really tasked him to be on the zodiac to pull people out of the water because he could literally with one arm reach d..."

"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..."

"can become clinical yes yeah absolutely and it's it's you know i yeah absolutely and and we don't want to become we i don't want to become clinical in my films certainly let me ask you uh a strange an..."

"there's a man who crosses the border every day to retrieve the wounded and fair them safety and care and you also mentioned about heroism in the united states um can you tell me about this man and jus..."

"paid for that he was spending his own money to do it because he saw other human beings in need and it's like we were talking about earlier that's heroic right that's selfless that's that's aspirationa..."

"another time but the the short question is why is it so hard to watch your documentaries and other films other incredible films on the internet if i want to pay unlimited amount of money i want to pay..."

"and keep scrolling so it that that's just something to say about platforms because i think the things that need platforms the most are things like your films the things that i think a lot of people wo..."

"do that with hunger ward luckily i had funders um for that film yeah yeah take risks in this life it's gonna pay off which reminds me of let me ask you i already asked you for advice about for a filmm..."

"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..."

"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 ..."

"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 l..."

"and the opposite of life is not death it's indifference thank you for listening i hope to see you"