SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Julie Cohen and Betsy West – “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down”

Julie Cohen and Betsy West are Academy Award-nominated, Emmy-winning filmmakers who directed and produced the theatrical documentary “RBG.” Their film “Julia” was released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics in 2021 and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. “My Name Is Pauli Murray” premiered last year at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by Amazon Studios. Before they began their filmmaking partnership in 2015, West and Cohen both had careers in broadcast journalism and independent documentaries. Cohen directed “The Sturgeon Queens” and “I Live to Sing.” West is the Fred W. Friendly Professor Emerita at Columbia Journalism School.

“Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” is screening at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival, which is taking place March 11-20. Find more information on the fest’s website.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

JC&BW: This is a film about one of the most spectacular human beings you will ever come across. Her whole life, Gabby Giffords has been a font of energy, smarts, toughness, and charisma. After a 2011 assassination attempt, while she was a young congresswoman, Gabby deployed those traits and more to relearn to walk and talk, and ultimately to start her own organization to reduce gun violence.

Her husband, astronaut-turned-senator Mark Kelly, documented Gabby’s journey on videotape. With that precious archive and extraordinary access to film the couple’s professional and home life for 18 months in 2020 and 2021, we were able to put together a film that is both Gabby’s story of resilience and Gabby and Mark’s love story.

W&H: What drew you to this story? 

JC&BW: We were introduced to Gabby Giffords in early 2020. Even on Zoom, she and her husband, Mark Kelly, blew us away. She began the conversation by lifting up her foot to show us her RBG socks, and within a few minutes of talking to them both — learning about their journey, how Mark had documented so much of it on video, and the opportunity to film their new ventures — we knew we had to make this movie. 

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

JC&BW: We want people to walk out of the theater — or away from the screen — thinking about what steps we can take as a nation to reduce gun violence. But perhaps even more, we want audiences to think about the intelligence, determination, and sheer force of will that has driven Gabby Giffords’ ongoing recovery from a shattering injury and about the role that deep love can play in healing.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film? 

JC&BW: Unlike many films where access is a problem, working with Gabby and Mark was a joy. 

But, like so many other filmmakers, we had to navigate filming during the time of COVID. As we dropped in and out of Arizona and Washington to film verité scenes, we became more and more comfortable with health protocols and found it easier to shoot even though the pandemic lasted longer than most of us expected.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

JC&BW: We don’t go around saying the word “blessed” all the time but we were absolutely blessed to have Time Studios, and especially our ongoing friends and partners at CNN Films, come in from the start to fund and serve as the executives on this movie. The team supported this project in every sense of the word.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

BW: OK, this will date me, but I fell in love with the surfer documentary “The Endless Summer” directed by Bruce Brown when my sister and I saw it at a seedy art house in 1967. I later became obsessed with the British “World at War” documentary series created by Jeremy Isaacs. As a network news producer for several decades, I kept moving away from breaking news coverage to long-form video storytelling, and when I saw “Hoop Dreams” directed by Steve James, I realized you could marry journalism with compelling filmmaking. After I left the networks about a decade ago, I started trying to do just that. 

JC: It’s not just a matter of getting inspired. So many aspects of making a movie are arduous and stressful that you really need to stay inspired for each film, and sometimes on a week-to-week basis while you’re in the process of making the film. Often what inspires me are other films I see. In 2021, for example, I was inspired and rejuvenated by Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch.” Every line of dialogue, every quirky set, every camera angle, is a work of art. The admonition the Bill Murray character gives his writers, “Just try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose,” works nicely as advice to filmmakers, too!

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

JC&BW: Best advice: We won’t give away the context, but our film contains some excellent advice from Gabby Giffords herself: “Straight ahead. Keep on fighting.”

The worst advice is anything that places limits on you, especially based on your gender, race, age, or looks. 

W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?

JC&BW: Well, Gabby’s advice fits well here, too: “Straight ahead. Keep on fighting.” Set clear goals for yourself and your team and then keep trudging along, step by step, on the course you’ve set. 

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

JC: “Favorite” is a big word, and I don’t want to use an answer I’ve given to W&H in the past, so I’ll name one favorite from 2021: “Faya Dayi” by Jessica Beshir, a documentary about how chewing the psychoactive plant Khat impacts people in Ethiopia. The storytelling and the cinematography are gorgeous and original, and the dreamlike filmmaking style is a perfect fit for the subject matter. Go find this film. You won’t soon forget it.

BW: I love the genre of feisty young women stories, like “A League of Their Own” by Penny Marshall and “Bend It Like Beckham” by Gurinder Chadha. One of my all-time favorites is “Whale Rider,” Niki Caro’s astonishing story of a Maori girl’s dream to become the leader of her tribe. Her thrilling ride on the back of a whale is a beautiful metaphor for female empowerment, and one of the most magical and breathtaking scenes I’ve ever seen in a film.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?

JC&BW: We work more from our respective homes now, but feel extremely fortunate to have been able to keep pursuing documentary filmmaking — albeit with a lot of adjustments — through the pandemic. Our main strategy for keeping creative and productive: ample face-to-face communication, even though the faces are usually in boxes on a Zoom.

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make it more inclusive?

JC&BW: The best way to have more authentic representation of people of color on screen and more inclusion behind the scenes is to have a lot of — not just a few — people of color in key creative and executive positions. People often don’t like to say it so bluntly, but money matters.

Forever in this business, the studios and other funders have been more comfortable having their money flow towards white men. That’s beginning to change for women, and it’s beginning to change for people of color too. It needs to change faster so that filmmakers of color have the resources to execute their creative visions and business plans.