In 2009, a man walked into a church and shot late-term abortion doctor, George Tiller. His assassination brought the total number of doctors providing late-term abortions down to 4 nationwide. The event also highlighted the extreme opinions that have characterized this national debate, and just how far some would take it.  Nicknamed “Dr. Tiller Baby Killer”, Dr. Tiller, and his colleagues, have been subjected to wide scrutiny on both the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice sides of the debate. After Tiller peeks into the practices of the remaining four late-term abortion providers who have attempted to continue the work of Dr. Tiller, and presents an intimate view that may not change minds, but mostly certainly provokes thought.

In an early scene of After Tiller, two couples sit with Dr. Shelley Sella in the Southwestern Women’s Options clinic in Albuquerque, NM, discussing their current situations. Both women are well into their pregnancies and have discovered that their children will have extreme deformity or mental challenges if carried to term. Through their tear-filled conversations, the focus in each scene remains on the hands of these individuals as they gesture their explanations, grasp their soaked Kleenex, and clasp the hands of their loved ones. Without ever seeing a face, the overwhelming struggle each of these couples has faced is evident. And further, the ongoing struggle of living with the decision each of them has made: to proceed with a late-term abortion. Throughout the film the audience is exposed to these daily conversations Dr. Sella, and her colleagues Dr. Carhart, Dr. Hern and Dr. Robinson, have with their patients.

Not every case is as easy to sympathize with as knowing a child born would live a life of hardship. Often it’s a woman who couldn’t raise funds for the abortion until she was already far into her pregnancy and is now asking for a late-term abortion. Or even a woman who couldn’t make up her mind soon enough and now doesn’t want the child. The film keeps it’s lenses focused on the doctors faced with these patients. On the decision THEY must make to accept a case or not. Knowing they have to be able to live with their decision as well and that the alternative may also be harmful to the patient or the child.

Through bomb threats and other life-threatening situations, through constant media attention, and a stream of protestors, cat-callers, and religiously motivated loiterers, the doctors all discuss the very real consequences of their chosen profession. A profession that has destroyed marriages and resulted in destroyed homes and worried family members. Co-directors Martha Shane and Lana Wilson have done an excellent job at providing a candid look into these doctors’ lives.

After Tiller doesn’t try to settle any scores or provide any answers to this highly debated topic. If anything, the film creates an even grayer version of an already gray issue, but from a perspective not many seem to draw from. The filmmakers make it difficult after looking into the lives of these hardworking and empathetic healthcare providers to denounce them as murderers. Especially when their daily career-decisions affect them more personally than those who speak against their practices. As a brave film, After Tiller does what many anti-abortionists claim to do as well, provide a voice for those never before given the chance.

In After Tiller, directors Lana Wilson and Martha Shane take an in-depth look into the lives of some of the only doctors in the country willing and able to provide third trimester abortions to women. Dr. George Tiller, who many of the doctors worked under, was assassinated in 2009 by an anti-abortion protester, leaving the remaining handful of qualified doctors to continue his work under the same scrutiny, harassment, and fear. The ethicality of their occupation is up for debate, but their courageousness is undeniable.

The directors chatted with us about how the project started, why news outlets shied away from this story, the emotional filming process, how the film is affecting people, and more.

After Tiller is in theaters now. Visit aftertillermovie.com for more info.

What drove you to tackle such a controversial, polarizing topic for your documentary?
Lana: The idea came in 2009 after Dr. Tiller’s assassination. I became obsessed with the news coverage of his death, which was covered wall-to-wall on cable news networks. I remember being struck by the fact that he was killed in a church. It was surprising that the number one target of the anti-abortion movement was actually himself a hugely religious Christian. Then, I remember learning from the news that he’d been shot once before in the ’90s. He was driving to work in a car and a protester shot him in both arms, trying to kill him. He went right back to work the next day, and I was shocked by that. I was shocked–what kind of person would get shot and go right back to work the next day? What was motivating him? The way the news was covering it, they would just say “Mr. Tiller is a controversial doctor.” They were treating him as a political symbol, and they would treat the abortion issue in general the same way they always do, getting a talking point from each side of the issue and making it seem like this intractable war where nothing was ever going to change. I had so many questions that the news wasn’t covering: Why would a doctor do this work? Why would a woman seek an abortion so late in pregnancy? Now that Dr. Tiller’s been assassinated, I wondered if anyone else was left to take his place or if they’d all been scared away. I thought it would be incredible to have a film that kind of gets away from the politics and the screaming match and instead just goes inside the lives of these doctors. What is it like to be them for a day? Why are they doing this? How do they wrestle with the moral and ethical challenges?

This is an important story to tell. Why didn’t the media latch onto it?
Martha: What I think sells cable news is this more polarized back and forth, with people yelling at each other and this sense that this is so controversial and there’s no common ground. The form of documentary, we felt, would give us a chance to spend more time than you would ever have for a news segment with these doctors. We were able to take the time to really get to know them, and I think they felt confident participating in this film in part because they knew that we were going to take that time and that this wasn’t going to be some sort of “he said she said” back and forth. This was going to be an in-depth portrait of their lives and what we were seeking to do was to just be flies on the wall and observe what goes on in the clinics, what goes on in their lives, and really delve into what motivates them to do this work.

What was it like being a fly on the wall during some of the most emotional scenes in the film, like when the patients are discussing their decision to abort with the doctors? How emotional was it?
Lana: It was certainly very emotional hearing these stories that are so wrenching is very powerful. We took our cues from the doctors. If you see the film, you’ll see that the doctors aren’t afraid to show feeling. They don’t try to keep any artificial emotional distance from the patients, so we didn’t either. When we were in the room filming, we were just trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. We were a tiny three-person crew, and we would shrink back against the wall to not make these people feel any discomfort with us being there. I think they really forgot about our presence, actually. Because the conversations they were having were so intense and emotional, I don’t think that we really interfered with that. The patients never expected to end up there in the first place, and I think there’s something cathartic about sharing your story with people because you know that no one understands why a woman would seek a third trimester abortion and this could be really powerful to hear these stories.

With the gravity of this project, did you feel extra anxious to get it out to the public?
Martha: We felt like we owed it to the doctors and the patients who were brave enough to share their stories to get it seen by as wide an audience as possible. One of the best moments for us was when we premiered at Sundance. We had all the doctors there and they all came up on stage after the film and got a standing ovation. It was just so moving because they’re so used to, in their daily lives, facing threats and harassments and so much negative attention from the protesters that to see them getting this really warm response from the audience was amazing. We were really lucky find a distributor, Oscilloscope, who was committed to showing the film in the big cities where documentaries tend to play, but also to get it into some of these smaller cities in the Midwest. On our website, there’s a whole list of where we’re screening, including places where abortion is more controversial. It’s important to us that the film is seen by people on both sides. They tend to say, “This is complicated and I didn’t understand the reasons why woman seek these abortions and why a doctor would want to keep doing this.” I think it illuminates a lot for people on both sides of the issue.

You’ve seen first-hand some of the threats these doctors receive from protesters. Are they in danger?
Lana: They’re certainly in danger in the fact that they receive death threats. We hope that the film helps to humanize them. The doctors will be the first to acknowledge that people can disagree about this issue. They understand that. But, should the level of vitriol for these doctors really be so high that people are assassinating them? That’s the situation we’re in. We made this film to try to shed more light on this instead of more heat. We just feel like this is more complex than anyone thinks it is, but we need to be respectful and civil and recognize that the doctors and patients are human beings. Let’s try to have more compassion for them instead of judging. You can disagree with them, but why do it in such a vitriolic way that it just promotes hatred?

You’ve been traveling with the film for a while now. Have you had any conversations with people who have seen the movie and now engage in the abortion discussion in a less intense fashion?
Martha: Yeah, definitely. We showed the film in a lot of Southern cities and all over the country, and we have a lot of people come up to us afterwards who are pro-life who…(trails off). They’re not saying necessarily that they’re going to change the way they vote, or they’ve changed their political position on it. We didn’t want to be a very didactic film that was pushing some policy agenda. We wanted to make it more observational. What they ended up saying was that they had no idea that it was happening, or that it was so much more complicated than they thought it was. They’re really responding to the fact that the doctors are so candid in the film in talking about their own ethical decision making and how they decide whether or not to provide a woman with an abortion. They’re very candid in the fact that they struggle to make those decisions. I think people really respond to that. In the film, Dr. Sella says, “I think of them as babies.” I think that’s very much not the message for the pro-choice movement, but it’s sort of what everybody’s thinking. Because she says that, I think audiences are able to identify with her and trust her.

People on both sides seem to be responding to it in similar ways. What we hear from pro-choice people is that it pushes them to consider their own views as much as it would push someone who considers themselves pro-life. It’s interesting to talk to people on both sides of the aisle, who all realize they’re being pushed to think about this in a deeper, more nuanced way.

What have you taken from the experience of not just making the movie, but everything that’s happened since? How has it changed your lives?
Lana: A big thing we’ve taken away is being less judgmental of people in general. Even thought we came in feeling like we were pro-choice and not really knowing anything about third trimester abortions, we were definitely pushed when we saw some of these cases. The more you realize what desperate situations women are coming out of, especially lower-income women in this country who have kids, multiple jobs, and live nowhere near any kind of abortion clinic. Just to raise money to go get a pregnancy test can be incredibly challenging, let alone going across the country to pay for this incredibly expensive procedure. The more you learn about someone, the more you realize, “I have no idea what is going on for that person.” I had an aunt who was very conservative. When I told her about the movie I did it very carefully because I assumed she was against abortion rights, but she had actually had a miscarriage at six months into a planned pregnancy. She delivered a stillborn and went to an abortion provider to do that part of it, so she’d been through what the patients in our film had been through and had a lot of sympathy for them. You never have any idea where someone else is coming from.

Despite my short time at Hot Docs, I’d say that I came away seeing a batch of relatively good documentaries. The only problem for me is that, if I had to sum up the films I saw in one word, it would be ‘pleasant.’ Sure, the subject matter on a lot of them is harsh, but I rarely saw anything that tried to shake things up structurally/formally. Talking head interviews, animated interludes and statistics, light background music and other familiar documentary elements were used abundantly. With the exception of couple titles I was disappointed with the lack of risk in what I saw. The problem with that is, for me, the make or break factor on a lot of these films is the subject matter.

Overall ratings for Hot Docs 2013

Valentine Road: 7.5
Despite some poor choices and a conventional presentation, it’s a very powerful documentary – Review
The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear: 7.3
A promising debut from director Tinatin Gurchiani – Review
The Conversation: 7
The foreboding mood more than makes up for how much of a mess it is – Review
The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne: 7
A light and enjoyable doc with a compelling main subject – Review
Tales From The Organ Trade: 6.5
Well-done but too shallow in its approach – Review
After Tiller: 5
Compelling subject matter that probably would have worked better as a short – Review
Entangled: 4
A bold stylistic choice by the director ends up ruining what could have been something a lot more interesting – Review

Tales From The Organ Trade

A perfect example of when the subject matter actually proves to be interesting is Tales From The Organ Trade. In what seems to be a cheeky move, director Ric Esther Bienstock gets David Cronenberg to narrate her documentary about black market organ transplants. Starting in the Philippines, Bienstock films an organ trade in progress as an organ broker picks a viable candidate willing to sell their kidney.

At the same time Bienstock cuts between different people who have (or already had) looked into kidney transplants: a woman who’s been on a waiting list for 8 years, a man who paid for a black market transplant to save his life, an American looking for altruistic donors and some of the more famous transplant doctors who are currently on the run from the law. Eventually the doc goes into full-on advocacy mode, arguing that financial incentives for donating an organ shouldn’t be illegal.

There’s no doubt that Tales From The Organ Trade is a compelling feature, and watching it will definitely make people wonder why selling an organ is illegal, but that’s because Bienstock doesn’t really delve beyond the surface. The possibility of people being exploited against their will is never discussed (everyone who sold their organ talk about how it was their choice, and they had no regrets), and there’s no attempt to look further into poverty and other factors that cause people to sell their body parts. Despite being well-made, Tales From The Organ Trade is too simplistic to have any meaningful impact.

After Tiller

My most anticipated documentary of the festival, After Tiller, turned out to be the biggest disappointment. The subject matter is one that’s so problematic that the audience had to be checked by security at its Sundance premiere. The title refers to Dr. George Tiller, one of five doctors in the United States who can perform third-term abortions. In 2009, Tiller was murdered by a pro-life activist, and After Tiller follows the four remaining doctors who can perform the same procedure.

Doctors Shelley Sella and Susan Robinson, who worked with Tiller until his death, set up a clinic in New Mexico, while Doctors LeRoy Carhart and Warren Hern run clinics in Nebraska and Colorado respectively. Carhart faces the most trouble from protestors, as his decision to start providing third-term abortions after Tiller’s death causes Nebraska to pass legislature making it illegal to perform the procedure. The other three doctors mostly discuss how hard their job is both on a physical and mental level, as they constantly face threats against their own lives and grapple with the morality of what they’re doing.

After Tiller is, to put it simply, a surprisingly boring documentary considering how sensitive of a topic abortion is. It could be that, knowing the facts about what they’re doing already (the vast majority of these procedures are done because of issues that will harm the baby or mother significantly, not because of frivolous reasons), none of what I saw was especially fascinating. Other than a few compelling parts, like Dr. Hern explaining how his time working at a maternity ward in Peru inspired him to work with Tiller, there isn’t much explored here. The general message is that their line of work is hard, but I didn’t need a documentary to tell me that. I recommend people watch Lake of Fire, a more thorough and interesting look at abortion, instead.

The Conversation

Finally, two documentaries that did try to shake things up came from the festival’s ‘Made in Poland’ program. The first, a short film called The Conversation, will probably baffle anyone who didn’t read a synopsis beforehand. A man and woman, both in jail for committing murder, have communicated with each other through mail for almost a decade without ever seeing each other. The short films their first conversation, held over webcam while intercutting between the woman’s time out of jail on a day pass.

At first the poorly translated subtitles, combined with the lack of context for anything on screen and cheap quality of the footage, make the film repellant. However a few minutes in, whether it was intentional or not, it started to cast a spell on me. There was something sinister to the whole film, and even though I had a hard time understanding I embraced the atmosphere director Piotr Sulkowski managed to create.

Entangled

Unfortunately the film that followed, Lidia Duda’s Entangled, failed miserably at what it wanted to accomplish. The film focuses on a teenage boy who tried to get revenge on the man who molested him at a young age. After nearly beating the man to death, he went to the hospital and unsuccessfully tried to murder him again. Duda intercuts between the boy serving his jail sentence and his molester, who is now free after serving a jail sentence years ago.

While Entangled has some terrific cinematography, it’s Duda’s choice to obscure everyone’s faces in the film that tank her film. She shoots both of her subjects from behind or with camera angles that obscure their faces, a choice she makes to highlight how the story could apply to anyone. The only problem is that this story is incredibly specific, and any attempts to explore themes of revenge and rehabilitation get drowned out by the style. As much as I can respect Duda’s approach, it makes for some unbearably dull viewing.

While Cannes, TIFF, Sundance and other major film festivals put their focus on a wide range of films, the Hot Docs festival puts the spotlight entirely on documentaries. Now celebrating their 20th year, Hot Docs is screening over 200 titles this year from 43 countries. For me, it was a bit difficult to decide on what to see. Only a few documentaries were familiar to me, like After Tiller and Valentine Road which had festival premieres earlier this year. For the most part I had to rely on my own judgment, picking titles based on nothing more than the official description. Below are some of the documentaries I hope to see throughout the festival.

The Hot Docs festival runs from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto, Ontario. You can check out what’s playing and buy tickets at www.hotdocs.ca

The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear

Director Tinatin Gurchiani announces a casting call for youth, aged 15 to 23 years, from villages and cities throughout the country of Georgia. Some come for fame, others for a chance to tell their story. As the hopeful subjects stare into the revealing lens of Gurchiani’s camera, extraordinary tales unfold. With turns sorrowful and comedic, this cinematically stunning film reveals truths of war, love, dreams and poverty. Some of the subjects are followed more intimately, and through their eyes we get a glimpse into modern day Georgian youth. Winner of the Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary at Sundance 2013, The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear explores the unlikely circumstances we’re born into and the paths we choose to travel from there forward.

Valentine Road

The seaside town of Oxnard, California, was shattered in 2008 by the shooting death of Lawrence “Larry” King, a 15-year-old biracial, LGBTQ student. The killer? His white, 14-year-old crush, Brandon McInerney. Was this a hate crime—retaliation against unwanted advances—or something more complex, entrenched in the community and society at large? Did flamboyant Larry, who liked to crochet, wear makeup and don heels, push his attacker, an emerging white supremacist, over the edge? It sure made for catchy headlines and drew attention to the plight of LGBTQ teens, as well as the overwhelmed educational and juvenile justice systems. But sensational press coverage only scratched the surface of the real story. Valentine Road delves deeper, to explore the complicated issues of accountability, sympathy and deviance at the heart of a legal defense that posited a murder victim can be the cause of his own murder.

Entangled

The roles of victim and aggressor are tragically reversed when a young man exacts revenge on his molester. The abuser becomes the abused in this complicated and ambiguous debate between crime and punishment, attempted murder versus rape. Presented using cross-cutting narratives, the young man is put behind bars while his pedophile remains free. But neither man can escape the other. For over 10 years they’ve lived in the same small town, in a tight, messy knot of hatred, fear and emotional chaos. “Maybe you have to feel it to understand it,” the juvenile muses about getting even as he paces his cage. “Life is not fair. Life is evil,” the pedophile states from behind locked doors, fearful of harassment from neighbours and his victim’s looming release date. Neither man regrets his crime, just its consequences. Entangled portrays a brutal grey area of blame, where both and neither is guilty.

Mercy Mercy: A Portrait Of A True Adoption

Easily one of the most important documentaries on inter-country adoption, Mercy Mercy gives a rare look at all participants in the adoption process, including the parents who give their children up. Two loving Ethiopians parents, Sinkenesh and Hussen, have just been diagnosed with HIV and told they have only a year to live. They make the painful decision to give their two youngest children up for adoption, handing them over to a Danish family. In an emotional departure, the Danish family promises to stay in touch and the adoption agency agrees to broker the relationship. What seems like the best decision for the children becomes a series of tragic and painful events for all, unveiling that the well-being of children is not always the main priority in the adoption process. Greed, selfishness, unrealistic expectations and skewed cultural perspectives idealizing one way of life over another collide in this powerful story.

The Life And Crimes Of Doris Payne

How does a poor, single, African-American mother from segregated 1950s America wind up as one of the world’s most notorious jewel thieves? Just ask her. A glamorous 81-year-old, Doris Payne is as unapologetic today about the nearly $2 million in jewels she’s stolen over a 60-year career as she was the day she stole her first carat. With Payne now on trial for the theft of a department store diamond ring, filmmakers Kirk Marcolina and Matthew Pond probe beneath her consummate smile to uncover the secrets of her trade and what drove her to a life of crime. Stylish recreations, an extensive archive and candid interviews reveal how Payne managed to jet-set her way into any Cartier or Tiffany’s from Monte Carlo to Japan and walk out with small fortunes. This sensational portrait exposes a rebel who defies society’s prejudices and pinches her own version of the American Dream while she steals your heart.