Mariska Hargitay in 'My Mom Jayne' Courtesy of HBO Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Eight of this year's top documentary filmmakers - and Oscar contenders - talk about their movies, their inspirations and taking on subject matter ranging from highly dangerous to deeply personal. Mariska Hargitay (My Mom Jayne) On finally being ready to make a film about her mom, Jayne Mansfield: "I'd had a lot of PTSD from the car accident when I was 3 [that claimed her mother's life], so I wanted to be really careful. But I did a lot of trauma work, therapy, something called parts work and internal excavation, and realized that, after I did this work, I got so much internal space back. When somebody has PTSD and is traumatized, especially as a child, you don't have the words. I would get these feelings, not knowing what it was because I didn't understand what to compare it to. Sometimes I'd be driving and I'd have to pull over - I couldn't be trapped. There were a lot of things that I didn't fully understand. But I went deep and excavated that; it was an archaeological dig, both on my family and on myself. I wanted to untrap myself, and I wanted to be free. After I had done so much work that I felt like a different human, I went, 'Oh my God, I can tell the story.'" Read more. - Scott Feinberg Related Stories TV The Hollywood Reporter Celebrates TV's Top Creators With Inaugural Directors in Focus Event Movies USC Scripter Awards: 'Peter Hujar's Day' a Surprise Film Adaptation Nominee, 'Slow Horses' Lands Fourth Consecutive Nomination for TV Adaptation Laura Poitras (Cover-Up) On wanting to tell the story of investigative journalist Seymour "Sy" Hersh for 20 years and why it took so long: "I documented the war in Iraq. As I was preparing to go there, his story on Abu Ghraib, and the photographs, were published. It was heart-stopping that this torture was happening, and at a time when most of the mainstream press was cheerleading for the war and not asking adversarial questions of the government. Then, within weeks, I was in Iraq - I actually filmed at Abu Ghraib - and then came back and was editing. I knew that the so-called War on Terror wasn't ending anytime soon and that my next film was going to continue on this, and that there was a crisis in investigative journalism, with Sy being an example of the opposite, so I called him up. I went to his office in D.C., and there's Sy, with his tennis rackets, leaning back and asking, 'What do you want?' We talked for 40 minutes. I was desperate to make this film, just based on his body of work. He could've been not such an interesting guy, and I still would've been interested, but once I met him, I became obsessed. But he left me a message, saying, 'I love your work, but unfortunately even with the sources that live down the street from me, I have to go to other cities or countries to meet them, and there can be no cameras following.' Every now and then, I'd be like, 'Hey, Sy, checking in. Maybe now's the time?' Then I ended up making [the 2014 Oscar-winning Edward Snowden doc] Citizenfour, which was, in a way, also about journalism, and [the 2022 Oscar-nominated doc] All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which taught me about working with archival material and doing a large scale of history, with Nan [Goldin, the latter film's subject]. It was also half a century, and her archive was very personal, but it was a great experience. So I reached out again. Sy had a longtime collaborator, Mark Obenhaus, and we decided to do it together." Read more. - Scott Feinberg Gabe Polsky (The Man Who Saves the World?) On when he first heard about Patrick McCollum, an American convinced he's destined to fulfill an ancient prophecy: "I got a call out of the blue from a producer who works with Jimmy Kimmel. We'd been wanting to work together, and he said, 'Would you get on the phone with this guy Patrick?' Patrick told me this story about Indigenous elders of the Amazon coming to him and saying, 'We think you're this guy in the prophecy that's going to help to unite the tribes of the Amazon.' I thought he was crazy, but something inside me wanted to know more. I met Patrick and started getting to know him, and it was like a machine gun of one insane story after another. I'd never met anyone that strange and fascinating. He seemed to have done everything from being a carny to a jewelry designer to a peacemaker. He was a kung fu master, a welder and a race car driver. He was best friends with Jane Goodall. It was almost overwhelming. But I knew at the end of the day, whether this prophecy was real or not, that he had something really deep to say, and I could learn a lot from him." Read more. - Scott Feinberg Petra Costa (Apocalypse in the Tropics) On convincing Brazil President Lula, right-wing leader Jair Bols