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If there's anything that Davis Guggenheim's filmography shows, it's that he's willing to take on contemporary topics with large-scale implications.
From climate change in "An Inconvenient Truth" to education reform in "Waiting for 'Superman,'" Guggenheim's subjects are decidedly important. And that's true for his newest documentary, "He Named Me Malala."
The film follows the story of Malala Yousafzai, a young woman who was shot in the head by the Taliban for supporting women’s education in Pakistan. Malala survived, and she’s gone on to become a strong voice for women’s rights. In 2013, Malala was invited to give a speech at the United Nations, and last year she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism.
When we spoke with Guggenheim at the Telluride Film Festival, we asked him about the evolution of the title for "He Named Me Malala," the father-daughter story at the core of the documentary, and how this story affected his relationship with his own family.
You started your [Telluride] screening by talking about how this originally was supposed to be a narrative film, that Walter Parks and Laurie McDonald were going to produce it, and they came to a realization that there was a huge problem they couldn't overcome. What was that problem?
Who would play Malala? I think this was when Malala was working on her U.N. speech, so this was May, two years ago. And when you meet her in person, there's something about her — she's very quiet, very focused, but there's this presence that few people have. They flew home and said, "It can't be a movie. It has to be a documentary." And they called me.
And what did you know of her story at that point?
Kind of what most people had heard — a girl who was shot on the school bus by the Taliban, and little bits and pieces, like, Yeah, I remember her. She was on [the cover of] Time magazine. If that was it, the story might not have had enough dimensions to it.
But then as I started reading about it, the story of her father and how he gave her her name, it turned out that the story had many interesting layers. Immediately, I thought father-daughter story, because I have two daughters. That was interesting to me.
At what point did you start thinking of the film, even if it wasn't titled yet as "He Named Me Malala"? Obviously, that's the name of the movie, but when did it occur to you that that's what this movie was really about it, that it wasn't "I Am Malala"?
The name came quite late, actually. When I make documentaries, the central piece is letting the story reveal itself to you. I'm interviewing Malala and she's telling me the story of the Battle of Maiwand and this girl, this mythical Pashtun girl who rallies the Afghan troops that are losing to the British. She climbs a mountain and tells them, "Fight for your lives. It's better to live like a lion for one day than a slave for a hundred years," and this girl is killed for speaking out.
And I'm just sitting there [thinking], Malala is named after a girl who speaks out and is killed for speaking out. And then Malala is a young girl who speaks out and is shot, almost killed, for speaking out. It's just too ironic, or too epic. It made me wonder if this was predestined, like, Is this father pulling the strings of this young girl?
It seems like much of your film is about what has happened with this family after their daughter was shot. How much time did you spend with the family, and were they at all reluctant to have you enter their lives in such a visible and constant manner?
I was there constantly for two years. It was full-immersion filmmaking. And what's so different about her family, what's so refreshing, is that people in our world are so used to being photographed — they're photographing themselves and telling their stories through those images — that they're suspicious when you bring a camera into their lives: You're not going to tell my story. I'm going to tell my story.
Malala and her father [Ziauddin] started telling their story in Pakistan out of need — their schools were being blown up, their livelihood was being taken away, they were under threat — and they needed to tell their story. For them, the telling of their story is who they are, and it's part of what they do.
How did being with that family change the way you saw your own family and your relationship with your children?
I love that question, because that's what I try to do as a filmmaker. If the stories I'm telling resonate with me as I get home and sit at the kitchen table with my kids, then it's working. So I think, What kind of father am I? Do I see my daughters as equal to my son? And sometimes I don't answer that question very well. When I read something really interesting, I'll go to my son and say, "Hey Miles, did you hear about this?" I don't say that to my daughters.
And then I think about this Pakistani father who took the family tree, which goes back 300 years of Yousafzais, and there are no women. He does this radical thing, which I'm sure many Yousafzai men would find offensive — he took a pen and wrote her name on [the family tree].
I'm on the Westside of L.A., I have all these great values, but am I as good a father? Do I see my daughter as free and emancipated and as equal to my son? Those challenges are fantastic and push me as a man, and that's what I love about what I do.
You've talked about how making this movie has changed the way you see yourself as a father. Has it changed the way you see yourself as your father's son?
That's a very interesting question. My father [Charles Guggenheim] made documentaries and he was my greatest teacher, and he died 11 years ago. At his core, he was a teacher — he taught me the fundamentals. Even though my films are so different than his, the fundamentals are absolutely the same. They're personal stories, the stories of people struggling and overcoming those struggles. He taught me that.
But, more than anything, there was the fact that my father saw potential in me — he saw that I could be great. And maybe if you were to reduce what Ziauddin did for Malala — he saw her as a human being in a culture where girls don't have names, or they're seen as people to be married off at a young age, or worse. The great, simple gift that my father gave me was that I could say something in the world.