Betsy West and Julie Cohen Have a Gabby Giffords Doc in the Works

Films

Betsy West and Julie Cohen Have a Gabby Giffords Doc in the Works

Betsy West and Julie Cohen have yet another documentary in the works. The pair released two in 2021, “Julia,” a portrait of culinary queen Julia Child, and “My Name Is Pauli Murray,” a tribute to the titular late civil rights activist and lawyer. The collaborators are best known for 2018’s “RBG,” their Oscar-nominated look inside the life and career of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now they’re set to turn their cameras on another headline-making woman in politics: Gabby Giffords. Titled “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down,” the doc will revisit the “former congresswoman’s courage and perseverance in the aftermath of a 2011 assassination attempt that left her partially paralyzed and with the language impairment, aphasia. In total, 13 people were wounded and six were killed in the attack, including a 9-year-old girl,” per Variety.

Featuring access to Giffords’ home movies that were taken at the hospital as well as “current-day cinema verité footage documenting Giffords’ painstaking recovery from a gunshot to her head and emergence as one of America’s most passionate and powerful advocates for gun violence prevention,” the doc promises to tell a “more personal story, as Giffords’ husband Mark Kelly gives up his job as a NASA astronaut to support his wife’s recovery, before launching a successful run for the U.S. Senate for Arizona.”

Giffords founded “Giffords,” a gun safety organization, following the Newton, CT shooting. She is still a gun owner herself, and explains that she’s “not against guns,” but rather calls for “common sense gun laws.”

“Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” is near completion, and will feature interviews with former president Barack Obama, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, among others. CNN Films and TIME Studios are behind the project.

“Within minutes of meeting Gabby Giffords, we knew we had to make a film about this phenomenal woman,” said Cohen and West. “The intelligence, humor, and toughness she brings to every personal and political challenge that comes her way makes Gabby not only an ideal documentary subject, but also a spectacular human being to spend time with.”