Damon & Affleck’s Haiti documentary
Two decades ago, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were struggling actors. Then in 1998, what started as Damon’s writing assignment from Harvard University became a well-recognized screenplay that the two childhood friends wrote.
Good Will Hunting was the second most nominated film in the 70th Academy Awards held in 1998. It tied with L.A. Confidential and was runner-up to Titanic, which had 14 nominations. The movie didn’t win Best Picture but it won the Best Original Screenplay award for Damon and Affleck, as well as a Best Supporting Actor award for the late Robin Williams.
But more than the Oscar statuette, the movie gave Damon and Affleck credibility. By then they had been working in Hollywood for years, but had never made much of an impact or money. The two appeared as extras in the Kevin Costner-starrer
Field of Dreams (1998). They also starred alongside Brendan Fraser and Chris O’Donnell in School
Ties (1992), wherein Damon was the main antagonist.
Over the years, Damon and Affleck, who have one of the most enduring Hollywood relationships, continued to make projects. Individually, Damon focused on acting while Affleck expanded to directing.
But in between solo projects, they still worked together. They created Project Greenlight, an HBO docuseries where they help one filmmaker—from thousands who submit scripts—create a movie. The project went on for four seasons.
The latest project from the tandem is a documentary.
The story of the global nonprofit Partners in Health is the story of a few young idealists who couldn't have started any smaller—trying to deliver primary health care in rural Haiti 30 years ago. With no structures, little money, undaunted spirits and a belief that all lives are worth saving, the tireless work of Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim and Ophelia Dahl revolutionized the global health movement. Partners in Health now employs 18,000 people and impacts rural communities around the world. Their story is recounted in the documentary Bending
the Arc, from directors Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos, which premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival.
"Paul and Jim and Ophelia are personal heroes for me," Damon said.
Damon's an executive producer on the film, as is Ben Affleck. Both have known Farmer for years, having sought him out for his extraordinary contributions to the global health care movement. Affleck met him in Rwanda, Damon met him in Haiti, and both civically minded Hollywood stars didn't blink at lending their support to the project when producer Cori Shepherd Stern approached them.
Both believe the film will be inspiring and galvanizing for millennials as they seek a theatrical distributor at Sundance.
"What's so great about their story is it didn't start grand and big," said Damon. "It started with these people who had incredible passion."
Affleck, speaking by phone from Los Angeles, was drawn to the fact that the three-decade partnership all started with a shared conviction that, "preventable suffering was totally unacceptable."
For Dahl, when she thinks about it, the origin of the movement really goes back to their upbringings, where they'd been socialized to expect the best, or at least know that when things go wrong, that there are always steps you can take to make it better.
"When I went to central Haiti and saw what I saw there, it kind of in some ways didn't occur to me that we couldn't improve it in some way," Dahl said.
Stern got started pursuing the story in 2003, following the publication of Tracy Kidder's book about Farmer, Mountains
Beyond Mountains. It took over seven years to make Bending
the Arc, which chronicles the origins and the strides Farmer, Dahl and Kim made in treating Tuberculosis and HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) in developing countries through community-based care, fair pricing and global funding.
"Ultimately the story is an invitation. It's an invitation for all of us who have some power and who can bring out voices to influence power to reject the mindset that health care is simply too hard or too expensive or too complicated," Affleck said.
Dahl is a bit worried about the new political climate under President Trump, but said that throughout her years of work around the world, she's always found people in government at every level who are willing to help.
Damon also doesn't know what the future holds, but hopes for the best.
"Jim Kim's ambition was not to run the World Bank. He was like 'I was protesting that thing 20 years ago!' That's the great message of the movie and the great lesson of their experience and what they did is that it started at a place of purity and passion and grew into something that's massive and undeniable and that's I think really a great lesson for every millennial," Damon said. "If you can stick with something, and truly believe in something and can stay with it and find comrades in arms, you can move mountains."