5 Questions #10: Madeleine Gavin
The director of the Sundance-winning doc thriller BEYOND UTOPIA
For years now, I’ve felt the “documentary thriller” genre has been in full blossom, but when I saw Madeleine Gavin’s riveting BEYOND UTOPIA, I felt I had to abandon the term, since as much as the term may have made the film more accessible to a wider audience, it turned human struggle into entertainment. Recognizing humanity is perhaps the greatest goal of all artistic endeavor, and it is far more difficult than it sounds. There is no denying the courage and risk, heart and soul, that both the subjects and filmmakers put into their work with a film like BEYOND UTOPIA. We are so desperately in need of films like this, yet at this moment in culture, audiences are being limited on their access. These films come together not by corporate dollars but by shear determination and passion — that feeling of necessity from all collaborators. These films don’t come to audiences either by the industry machine, but again by the passion and determination of individuals who are committed at exposing the truth to all of us. I feel very fortunate that Madeleine was able to take a beat from her endless efforts to bring this film forward, and answer a few questions for all of us.
Your film takes us right into a courageous, highly risky act. Can you walk us through your decision to join them — putting yourself at risk? What were your considerations, how you weighed them, the barriers, and ultimately the deciding factors that made you leap in?
While doing research for our film, I discovered hidden camera footage that was being shot inside North Korea by people risking their lives to get the truth of their country out. Finding this footage was like opening a treasure box into the past, only it wasn’t the past. It was happening right now and we, on the outside, knew almost nothing about it. The outrage I felt in glimpsing the reality of life for 26 million North Koreans, while at the same time knowing how absent they were from our conversation is what drove me to make this film.
Documenting people on a life-or-death quest for freedom involved many inherent dangers. Even before we met them, our subjects’ decision to defect had put them at risk of capture, repatriation, and likely death. Therefore, the most important mandate for us was not to add any additional risk to their journey. Every decision began from this place and was vetted through our consultants in the policy and activism worlds as well as through Pastor Kim. These people were our guides as to how, where and when we as filmmakers could shoot and where only the Underground Railroad could join our subjects.
Although our subjects were already in danger when we met them, for us risk was a choice we had to make if we were going to attempt this film at all. We were documenting in real-time and we had no idea what was around the next corner nor who might be following us from behind. We were traveling through hostile terrains, on various roads; we were in safe houses, but in this context what did the word “safe” really mean? The entire shoot felt like a logistical high-wire act, and one where we dared not look down.
An additional risk we weighed heavily was centered around the issue of consent. When Pastor Kim and I decided to work together, my producers and I knew that, unlike in most documentaries, consent was either going to come late in the process or not at all. The Roh family had fled across the river into China because they knew their lives were over if they stayed in the North. Under these circumstances it would have been unethical to ask for or accept consent from them. In fact, we had to be okay with not knowing if we’d get consent until such time as (if they were lucky enough to make it to safety) the family were able to evaluate what a documentary was, what their part in it would be, and to have the option to say no. Likewise with the other story we followed, we gave Soyeon the option of bowing out until just days before beginning our final finishing, causing me to edit two different versions of the film up until the very end. These were difficult realities to swallow but the only way to attempt a film like this was to risk the possibility of not being able to use a single frame of what we were spending months documenting.
Finally, while the focus of our film is the actual people of North Korea, the Kim regime is the backdrop to everything because it is their policies that force people to flee. Therefore, we knew that in contextualizing our subjects’ realities, we would have to go head-to-head with the regime to some extent. In almost every Q&A when asked about our fears of reprisal, the hacking in response to the film The Interview comes up. And yes, we entered this journey with more than a little trepidation. That said, the consensus from our consultants was that what Kim Jong-Un couldn’t tolerate about The Interview was that he was viciously mocked and ridiculed. In our film he is depicted as a brutal dictator, a strongman, all things heard on the news on a regular basis. And by all accounts, these characterizations don’t particularly bother him. While this gave us some reassurance, the anxiety never completely went away. Ultimately, we felt that bringing the voices of North Koreans forward was so important, and so long overdue, that there was no turning back, and we decided to plunge through our fears. (As a side note: In all likelihood, the Kim regime has known about our film for almost a year now and we are pretty sure they have seen it.)
Is there a particular moment or person or thing that led you to decide you wanted to be an artist, or had the strength to pursue it? Could you tell us a bit about that?
I can’t say there is one particular moment that brought me to where I am, but where I find myself does seem like a pretty natural outgrowth of what’s driven me most of my life. My first love was reading and the first writers I fell in love with were Emily and Charlotte Bronte and their respective books, “Wuthering Heights” and “Jane Eyre”. Those books led to others and a fire was lit in me; I was sure I wanted to be a writer. I was in awe of the way a combination of words could be strung together to articulate a moment, drive us into another’s skin, or carry us into a seemingly foreign experience and make that experience palpable. As a kid I would mark up novels with pens, underlining phrases that struck me, or folding pages over so that their corners pointed at a sentence that impacted me in some meaningful way. I tried to piece apart how a phrase could have such power. Was it the sentence on its own that moved me or was it the paragraphs that came before that made that specific sentence so potent and impactful? Looking back, I realize I was trying to piece apart the magic that exists in the relationship between structure, language and pacing, all things that are central to film although at the time this connection never crossed my mind.
When I discovered editing, it felt like its own form of writing, but a writing with images, sound, and music, and one that was experienced and even determined in time. Directing documentaries made this “writing” even more expansive for me, because it starts with a curiosity or a question and every decision as to what to shoot, who to follow etc springs from that while also evolving based on what I'm learning along the way. It's like the unraveling of an onion, honing in yet resonating out at the same time. In some ways I think of documentary directing as the free associative writing that allows us to dive deeper into what we want to explore but with a freedom that connects us to something intuitive and not entirely literal. The result of that exploration is all the material that is taken into the final draft, which is the edit itself.
What is it that you distinctly strive for in filmmaking -- the thing that makes it yours -- and what are the typical barriers you have to overcome to get there?
I came to both of the films I’ve directed as an outsider and, in some ways, I think bridging what at first appeared to be foreign and far away, was a driver for me. With both films, I was confronted by how much I didn’t know, and this created burning questions that I felt compelled to explore.
In the first film I directed, City of Joy, I had heard testimonies from women in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo who had suffered horrific rape, experienced devastation to their communities, and often witnessed their children going through such atrocities. And yet they had hope for the future; they believed they could still create meaning in their lives. The resilience of these women filled me with awe, and I wanted to understand how this was possible. In Beyond Utopia, feeling the pulse of a nation who have been hermetically sealed off from and largely unacknowledged by the rest of the world for decades is what made me decide it was necessary to tell this story.
Both of these films were shot in remote locations but that isn’t what drew me to them. In fact, a film I’ve been shooting on and off for several years is happening right here in New York City and this subject compels me in a similar way. This film focuses on a group of octogenarians who, despite debilitating illnesses, are finding transcendence, and from a most unexpected source. Witnessing the visceral, almost exhilarating experiences they were having left me with a need to understand “How….” I think overall for me it really comes down to goals of compassion - and in a raw, hopefully not gratuitously sentimental way. It's about being slapped across the face by something we might have taken for granted, and the feeling of “Oh wow, I never thought about that and that’s important.” Or “what they are going through is meaningful and potent and I think I grasp a bit of what it must feel like for them.”
The adage “the more specific the more universal” resonates for me in pretty much everything I do. I think about this when I work in narrative film as an editor, in looking at performance and trying to find moments that resonate beyond themselves, or when a director and I try to crystallize a scene down to its essence and that scene suddenly levitates, crackling with life. It’s something I thought about with both documentaries I’ve directed. Millions died in decades of civil war in Eastern Congo and the devastation was so massive that, when I first read about it, it was impossible for me to wrap my brain around it. It was easier to go numb and turn off because how could I even begin to process, connect to or help. But through focusing on a small group of girls, I hoped the larger reality would reverberate. And it‘s something I thought about when trying to bring forth the voices and needs of 26 million North Koreans by focusing on two families struggling for survival and for some semblance of freedom in their lives. In our increasingly homogenized, connected world, we can sometimes lose sight of the very specific life experiences that bring meaning to moments, and it’s these moments that get lost between the cracks that are much of what I am excited to explore.
What’s the most useful or successful way you've found to approach possible future collaborators and get the results you aim for?
I think as in most things in life, being honest and staying true to your word are the most important things in approaching anyone I might hope to work with. Once working together, I think not letting ego get in the way of what’s best for a project is key.
At its core, film is a collaborative process. The discussions and debates between director and editor in the editing room are one of my favorite aspects of the filmmaking process because those disagreements propel a film forward. Sometimes one person might think a structure, or a scene is the best it can be, and another is convinced there’s another way. That push and pull stretches the potential of the project, often elevating the results in a tangible way.
Because I edited both films that I’ve directed, I was often having these debates with myself, trying to step out of my own POV to confront any assumptions etc. This was incredibly challenging and with both films, I tried to be rigorous and thorough in viewing my decisions from multiple angles. I also had producers and other valuable voices giving me thoughts along the way and I tried to weigh everything as best as I could, to consider all input in its entirety.
I have a sort of instinctual faith in the dialectic that pushes material through the phases it must go through in the creation of a film. And I really believe that, if everyone involved is keeping ego out of the equation, the cream (or some version of it since there is no one answer in so much of this) will rise to the top. The discussions will dissipate down to what is important and some organic telling of the story will emerge.
Do you have a creative practice or process? Why have you embraced it (or not)? Can you explain it a bit for us?
I think in both narrative and documentary, my creative process comes down to clocking my instincts but always staying open to surprises along the way so that the storytelling can reveal itself.
I very consciously move back and forth between narrative and documentary in my editing work. I love both forms and I feel like switching between them is a great creative challenge and may even help prevent me from falling into crutches or patterns of thinking. In some ways I feel like my approach to narrative and documentary is similar. In documentary there is no script, and in narrative I believe the script should be thrown out after the first cut – not indiscriminately, but I find that except in rare projects, scene order and dialogue choices don’t often translate from the page to the screen. Most often, it seems that if you let go of the script, the final film will speak more to the core of the intention of the story than it would if you were to try to stay true to what was on the page.
When editing a narrative film, I start by watching every take from before “Action” until after “Cut”. I feel like a big part of being an editor is allowing myself to be seduced by the material; if I don’t find something in the material that moves me, how can I possibly hope to make the story inspiring to others? So that first viewing of dailies is the touchstone for all that comes after and, when I watch, I don’t take my eyes off the screen. I usually do a combination of marks on the avid and notes jotted down blindly in a pad in front of me. I basically try to let the material wash over me, noting anything that captures my imagination, that connects me to the character, the theme, reveals subtext in a potent way – a moment, an expression, a nuance, whatever it might be. I don’t look at script notes until after this and I try not to make any decisions about what shot a scene should start on etc, but just try and stay totally open to whatever the footage is telling me. It sounds hokey now that I’m writing it but in this process there is no pressure, no struggle and only the trust that by keeping kind of a steady eye on things, gems will reveal themselves. It’s actually pretty meditative. After this first viewing, I begin to work with selects, getting more specific along the way. But that process of being thorough and unbiased and letting the footage guide me, is the foothold for all that comes next.
In documentary filmmaking I have a similar process which is about keeping my eye on the curiosity that drove me to the subject matter, while not allowing any preconceived notions to control the outcome of that exploration. Remaining open to the possibility of the story changing entirely based on what’s unfolding along the way is critical in this process.
This was a huge part of the making of Beyond Utopia. From the beginning, I had wanted to crack open the reality of life for North Koreans in a raw, experiential way but, given how off-limits North Korea was and how complicated access was going to be, some of this seemed almost like pie in the sky thinking. I began shooting in South Korea, initially following more of an intimate psychological thriller in modern day Seoul, but all the while keeping my eyes peeled for a crack into the North itself. Many months later when I met Pastor Kim, this crack revealed itself and our film took a sharp turn. We were suddenly given access to places at once unimaginable yet organically connected to the guiding impetus of the project. My producers and I all knew we had to jump at this opportunity, and I consider myself incredibly lucky that these were the producers I was working with because I know how rare this flexibility can sometimes be. In turn our financiers also embraced this new direction and we all walked into the unknown together.
Madeleine Gavin is an Emmy-nominated editor whose credits include award-winning narrative and documentary films that have premiered at Sundance, Toronto, Berlinale, and Cannes, among others. Madeleine is director and editor of Beyond Utopia which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival where it received the Audience Award for Best US Documentary. The film has gone on to garner numerous other awards at both domestic and international film festivals and has been shortlisted for an Academy Award. Prior to Beyond Utopia, Madeleine directed and edited the Netflix Original Documentary, City of Joy, which follows a group of women at a revolutionary leadership center in war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. One of the film’s subjects, Dr. Denis Mukwege, received the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize shortly after the film was released. Currently, Madeleine is in production on a film that follows an indomitable group of octogenarians in New York City who, while facing debilitating illnesses, are finding transcendence through their relationship with an irascible, larger-than-life music coach.
If you’ve been digging these “5 Questions”, you might just want to make sure you haven’t missed any. Here’s the prior ones:
Joe Brewster & Michèle Stephenson 12/11/23
Roger Ross Williams 12/15/23
Matthew Heineman 12/18/23
Nicole Holofcener 12/22/23
Chris Zalla 12/27/23
Pawo Chorying Dorji 1/3/24
Maite Alberdi 1/6/24
S. Leo Chiang 1/7/24
At least the doc has been recognized. So many films that are more than just art-for-arts-sake, but are art-for-humanities-sake, never see the light of day. Whenever we do see them, we must reveal them to the world.