Films That Change Lives
My takeaways from three days of watching extraordinary documentary films
I know many of you are here for running-related content, but I’m sharing something different this week. (Except at the end; scroll down for a training tip.)
I’m running consistently and completed a successful four-hour long run last Friday, but that doesn’t feel relevant. I’m instead preoccupied with the question, “What can I do that’s more meaningful and that makes the world a little better?” as a result of how I spent my weekend.
For much of the long weekend I sat indoors, for a good reason. I passed the hours in dark theaters to watch numerous mind-blowing, heart-expanding, gut-wrenching documentary films as part of Telluride’s Mountainfilm fest. I want to tell you about the best of them and their messages, and urge you to watch them if you can.
Mountainfilm, established in 1979, is an incredibly special event and, in my view, much more worth the expense of traveling here than Telluride’s better-known Hollywood-heavy film fest that happens over Labor Day weekend. The first line of its mission statement accurately describes it in a nutshell: “Using the power of film, art, and ideas, Mountainfilm inspires audiences to create a better world.” If you are seeking a special trip for next Memorial Weekend, consider coming out here to take part in this festival.
I loved not only the films, but also the experience of sharing them with an audience as we viewed a large screen, all of our devices put away in do-not-disturb mode, feeling connected by the stories that made us weep, gasp, and laugh. I hardly ever go out to movies anymore, preferring to stream them at home, and I’m guilty of scrolling on my phone while watching TV. Mountainfilm reminded me why the experience of watching films on the big screen is superior. We also experienced the bonus of socializing with others as we waited in queues to enter the theater or talked about the film afterward. At the end of each screening, we got to see and hear from the directors and subjects of the films as they took the stage for Q&As.
I hope you can experience these films.
The most incredible and surprising mountain athlete
I’m spotlighting Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa first because it’s being released in late June on Netflix, so put it on your watchlist!
The Asian woman with big round cheeks working at a Whole Foods in Connecticut doesn’t look like an athlete. She looks worn out and anxious, her eyes cast downward on the task of restocking shelves or refilling the salad bar, as if she wants to avoid notice. If you talk to her, you may struggle to understand her heavy accent. If you ask her to read, you’ll discover she is barely literate and has no formal education. If you visit her modest home, you’ll meet her two daughters who have adapted to American schooling and seem like normal, albeit depressed teens. When you learn about her home life, you’ll understand why she had to escape her husband and raise her daughters on her own.
This unlikely, extraordinary story about immigration and domestic violence is folded into a portrayal of one of the world’s greatest female alpinists.
This woman, Lhakpa Sherpa of Nepal, holds the women’s record for the most summits of Mount Everest. She seems to have superpowers—an inner strength of spirit and humor, plus a physical strength developed in the extreme high altitude of her upbringing. Earlier in life, she concealed her gender so she could work as a porter and cook on Everest expeditions (a male-only job). Her complicated relationship with a mercurial climber she married transported her to a life in American where she was confined to a housewife role until she broke free and followed her heart back to her homeland and Everest.
The footage of the Everest expeditions is absolutely stunning, and this woman’s strength and spirit are invincible. I can’t stop thinking about this film and her bravery.
The greatest love story
My other favorite film from Mountainfilm also takes place in Nepal. Between the Mountain and the Sky had its premier at the festival, and I couldn’t stop the tears streaming down my cheeks. Everyone around me was wiping their eyes, too. The film won Mountainfilm’s Audience Choice Award from audience voting, meaning it was the most popular among all the festival’s feature films.
Twenty years ago, Maggie Doyne of New Jersey was 18, a do-gooder with a big heart, when she went to Nepal on a gap year after high school to backpack around the Himalayas. Meeting young children along the way who were struggling and laboring—especially one girl, age 6, breaking rocks to sell—made her shift her focus to caring for these children in any way she could.
Instead of moving back home, she collaborated with a Nepalese man, Top Malla, to purchase land and build an orphanage. They co-founded and opened Kopila Valley Children’s Home in 2008 to house and raise some 50 children, with Maggie devoting herself to caring for all of them as a mother would.
The first half of the film will make your heart swell and your face smile from all the love, resourcefulness, and hard work she displays. The home and charity are so life-transforming, and Maggie’s dedication is so profound, that she earns recognition in the New York Times and receives CNN’s Hero of the Year Award.
Then, a devastating tragedy happens on her watch. It’s heart- and gut-wrenching for Maggie and for everyone at the children’s home. She spirals into a deep depression. From there, a love story blossoms, and healing begins.
Seeing Maggie and her husband, Jeremy, the filmmaker, on stage with some of the young adults they raised, who now attend college and have a promising future, made me awestruck. She shared a simple but powerful message of love—that in our war-torn world full of hate and hurt, one of the best, most effective things we can do is spread love and raise children lovingly so they do good in the world.
You can find out more about their work at their website and sign up for a newsletter that will give updates on when and where the film will be screened.
We need to open our eyes to this horror and beauty
I admit to war coverage fatigue in the two-plus years since Russia invaded Ukraine. I don’t follow the news about it closely, and I don’t see many blue and yellow “I Stand with Ukraine” signs or bracelets anymore.
I went to see Porcelain War, which takes place in Ukraine, mainly because of the buzz around it receiving the Grand Jury Award at Sundance Film Fest, where it premiered earlier in the year. It’s the story of three Ukrainian artists who specialize in making and painting exquisite little porcelain figurines inspired by nature. The film project started out as a documentary about their art, with a plan to animate the figurines. Then the invasion happened, and the documentary project took a sharp turn toward Armageddon. The filmmakers managed to ship the artists the camera equipment they needed to film the war unfolding, and then through Zoom and file transfers, they got the footage and produced the film by collaborating remotely.
Porcelain War is at times extremely difficult to watch, witnessing up close the utter destruction of Ukrainian towns and homes, bodies in streets, and people and their pets coping underground in subways or in the rubble. But it’s juxtaposed with extreme beauty, both from the artists’ work and from the artsy nature footage that they also capture.
Ultimately, the film conveys the drama of all civilians taking up arms and learning to use them—to practice killing to defend themselves—while also caring for each other and making art, revealing the utter extremes of hate and love, of ugliness and beauty. Most haunting, though, is the warning shared by one of the artists in the film, who took the stage after the screening: that this is not a film about Ukraine, it’s about Europe and the whole world, due to the menace of Putin and other authoritarian leaders repressing and crushing other countries.
In spite of—or because of—that doomsday scenario, art and creativity endure.
See the film’s website for more info and a schedule of its screenings.
Two political films that restore my faith in humanity
I’d also like to tell you about Public Defender and the short that played before it, Denial. Both have to do with the 2020 election.
Public Defender spotlights Heather Shaner, a tireless and feisty woman in her 70s who has worked for four decades as a public defender. She has liberal politics and despises Trump. Yet she’s called on to defend several of Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol during the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
Heather cares so much about her job that she takes an extraordinary amount of time to get to know each individual she represents. She peels back their layers to reach the core of the reasons and emotions that prompted them to believe the lie of a stolen election and to act destructively on January 6. With deep empathy and also humor, she builds trust and even friendship with her clients. We see how individuals can break down mistrust and begin to understand each other and reach common ground, or at least respect each other’s differences.
It’s unclear when and where the film may screen again, but you can follow its IMDb page for updates.
While Public Defender ultimately is uplifting and redemptive, Denial is more sobering and sad. Produced by The New Yorker documentary film series, it tells the story of Bill Gates—no, not that Bill Gates, a more obscure man with the same name—who was Arizona’s Republican Chairman. The short film portrays him as a likable and principled lifelong Republican who voted for Trump to support for his party. When the 2020 election becomes contested and all eyes focus on Maricopa County’s voting process, Gates faces enormous pressure to call the results for Trump, and he and his election workers face ominous threats. But Gates stands up to his party’s intimidation and defends the integrity of the process, and Biden ultimately won the vote there.
(It’s hard to find info online about this film, because other films exist with the same title, but this New Yorker story spotlights Gates’ experience in 2020 and the political fallout from it. Keep an eye out for the film at festivals or streaming.)
I think these films moved me in large part because they break through political polarization so we can reconnect on a personal level with empathy and rediscover our common humanity. While I share an abhorrence and heartache over what’s happening in Gaza, I’m also distressed about the way in which some Free Palestine supporters on campuses are ostracizing and shaming Jewish students for any affinity toward Israel, which is basically pressuring them to renounce or hide their beliefs and culture (here is one article on the topic that deeply troubles me). I also fear the polarizing and intolerant Christian nationalist voices on the right who, in my view, pervert the loving, peaceful, inclusive tenets of Christianity.
Perhaps I’m naive or hopelessly optimistic, but I believe that all the films spotlighted here have the power to bring us together to help—in a small, personal way at least— conflict resolution.
My favorite doc film from 2023 is being released soon
“The Grab” affected me more than any film at last year’s Mountainfilm festival. It looks like it will be released for on-demand streaming as of June 14.
With trenchant investigative reporting, it reveals the global fight over food and water: “Quietly and seemingly out of sight, governments, private investors, and mercenaries are seizing food and water resources at the expense of entire populations. These groups are establishing themselves as the new OPEC, where the future world powers will be those who control not oil, but food. ... The Grab is a global thriller that takes you around the globe from Arizona to Zambia, to reveal one of the world’s biggest and least-known threats.”
Please don’t shy away from heavy topics like this. The film is fascinating and motivating. It motivated my husband and me to screen out investments in companies complicit with big ag and factory farming, fast food, dirty energy and the like, and to invest in a fund devoted to sustainable ag, the environment, and food security. It also made me redouble efforts to shop and eat more like a locavore, supporting smaller independent growers and ranchers with a commitment to sustainability. Go see The Grab!
One of my favorite workouts
I promised at the top that I’d write something about running.
A couple of days ago, I felt the need and desire for a harder, higher-quality workout after spending so much time on my butt watching movies. A couple of weeks had passed since I last attempted to run fast-for-me, getting my heart rate above Zone 2. I knew I could use a good speed workout. But I didn’t want the precision of a typical track or paved-path workout that would quantify how relatively slow I’ve become. I wanted to run faster by feel on a dirt path, where the uneven dirt and rocks would slow me down but better prepare me for trail races.
I therefore dusted off one of my favorite ladder workouts, which measures intervals by time, not distance. It can be done anywhere, and it’s run by rate of perceived exertion rather than aiming to hit a certain pace and/or heart rate.
It’s a 10, 8, 6, 4, 2-minute workout, totaling 30 minutes of fast running. (If the following feels too challenging, try adapting these principles to a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1-minute workout instead). I like this workout because it feels manageable, since it’s broken up by minutes of recovery and each subsequent fast interval gets shorter. After you finish the first two intervals, you can tell yourself you’re more than halfway done and you can totally handle the shorter spurts of speed to come.
Warm up for a mile or so and do a few strides if you have the time and feel like it (30-second strides are a great way to prime your body for faster running, while also promoting better running form, but are not essential). Then look at your watch and start running “hard” for 10 minutes. The first level of “hard” that I recommend for this longest interval is a sustainably hard tempo pace that elevates your breathing just past the ability to talk in full sentences. It’s a pace that you could maintain for significantly longer if you had to, or about an 8 on a scale up to 10 with 10 being a maximum unsustainable effort. Then jog easily for two to three minutes to recover. (And yes, it’s fine to walk if you need to during the recovery portion. But if you need to stop fully and bend over gasping from exhaustion, then you likely ran that interval too hard.)
Follow the pattern of running the next timed intervals, each two minutes shorter, with a couple of minutes recovery between each. But make it a goal to go a little faster and harder the shorter each one gets; or, in the final minutes of each interval, try to increase your effort level. By the final shortest two-minute interval, your effort level should feel at least a 9 in terms of perceived exertion.
I did the workout, then ran a recovery mile, and finished red-cheeked, sweaty, and wiped out. A glowing feeling of satisfaction lasted the rest of the day.
A final recommendation
I recently finished
’s new book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, and recommend it! The book would appeal to non-runners and, it seems, the title and jacket text were crafted for a general audience. But runners, especially those who’ve been through injury or are going through one, will especially appreciate its story and its Zen-influenced insights. The narrative arc of an accident to a triumph involving a notable 100-mile ultra is a great story well told.Share below any documentary film or nonfiction book recommendations!
Nice change of pace. Super interesting