Davis Guggenheim explains reverential approach to ‘He Named Me Malala’

By Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press

TORONTO – Oscar-winning documentary maker Davis Guggenheim has been accused of being too soft and reverential with his new film, “He Named Me Malala,” and that’s fine with him.

He admits that while it’s not his intention, he ends up making movies about people he loves and things that inspire him, and that includes Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai and her family.

“I love them, I’m inspired by them and I want to express that,” Guggenheim said in an interview at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.

“I think if you were to make a political movie, you need to be more skeptical. But not this movie. I think sometimes an inspiring person is just an inspiring person, and what am I going to say — she didn’t floss? She doesn’t brush her teeth?

“I’ve made other political films. I chose to make that film and so I live by that choice and I wouldn’t change it.”

Guggenheim wrote and directed the doc, which opens Friday. Cameras follow 18-year-old Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner who survived being shot in the head by the Taliban when she was returning from school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley in 2012.

She was targeted for advocating for girls’ education along with her father, Ziauddin, who is heavily featured in the film. Also featured is Yousafzai’s mother, Toor Pekai, and brothers Khushal and Atal.

Guggenheim interviews Yousafzai and her family about how she came to love school so much, and how her human rights activism has been aided by her father but has ultimately been her own choice.

Yousafzai also reveals her giddy teenage side when she talks about her everyday interests, including boys.

“What’s amazing about her is, because she’s very sophisticated, she’s a deep thinker and very spiritual — but she doesn’t have a bitterness to her and also, she believes in some simple truths,” said Guggenheim, who won an Oscar for the 2006 doc “An Inconvenient Truth.”

“I think sometimes maybe in the West, we move past things that are so fundamental that we forget, like school. School’s annoying, we take it for granted, but for them, school was liberation, school was emancipation.”

Guggenheim built the family’s trust by first interviewing them off-camera, only recording audio.

Some of those audio-only interviews are heard throughout the film, accompanied by lyrical, hand-painted-style animation from Jason Carpenter.

“What I said to them was, ‘Let me help you tell your own story,'” said Guggenheim, whose other films include “Waiting for ‘Superman'” and “It Might Get Loud.”

“So when you see this movie, it’s their voices, it’s not my voice. So I feel like it’s very personal and it goes a level deeper than most movies.”

Guggenheim filmed over 18 months, in the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Kenya, Abu Dhabi and Jordon.

His three children, including two daughters, met Yousafzai and “love her,” he said.

“I think if I didn’t have daughters, I would have made a very different film, because at the core of it I wanted to answer this question I had, which is: What happened? How did this man, this father in Pakistan, 7,000 miles away from my home, create this daughter? Or how did they do it together? Because I don’t believe he created her,” said Guggenheim.

“This inspiring man and this courageous daughter — what happened? And how, as a father in Los Angeles, how am I going to do that? Because I find my daughters completely mysterious and confounding,” he continued with a laugh.

“Am I doing everything I can as a father? When I make a movie, I have to find a personal angle in, I have to answer questions for myself and I feel like if I do that, then I’ll make an interesting movie.

“If I’m detached from it, then I can’t.”

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