UNIQUE YOUNG LIVES
As seen in “Eagle Huntress,” “Life, Animated.”
Two documentaries shortlisted for the Oscar nominations, “The Eagle Huntress,” directed by Otto Bell, and “Life, Animated,” from Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams, showcase two remarkable young people on their own sorts of hero’s journey. ¶ Each overcomes mammoth hurdles: Aisholpan Nurgaiv, in “Eagle Huntress,” becomes the first female to learn to hunt with eagles in 12 generations of her Kazakh family, and Owen Suskind, in “Life, Animated,” is a young man with regressive autism who teaches himself how to communicate and interact with the world via Disney films. Here, the directors take us through their films.
“The Eagle Huntress”
The film stems from a photograph taken by Israeli photographer Asher Svidensky originally on the BBC. As your first film, what made you know this was the story you had to tell?
Once I dissected the photograph: incredible setting in the Altai Mountains; a young girl training with the largest species of golden eagle in the world and Aisholpan, the heroine, smiling and looking so angelic, I moved fast. I found the photographer on Facebook, we had a Skype call, and very quickly I had us on a plane to Mongolia to meet the family. At what stage did you realize you had something so extraordinary?
That first afternoon [meeting the family]. There’s a small window of days to remove a baby eaglet from its nest and that afternoon the father was taking Aisholpan to retrieve one. He asked, “Is this something you’d be interested in filming?” When I saw that little girl — I mean if I had Hollywood’s best costume and set designers I couldn’t have done anything better. This girl with a ribbon in her hair scaling and rappelling down the side of these mountains and hypnotizing the baby eagle with her hands and staring down the mother eagle circling overhead. Whose idea was it to have the kind of Greek chorus of elder naysayers bashing the idea of a girl becoming an eagle huntress?
It came to me as I interviewed other village eagle hunters, and they all said the same thing. When asked if there was a female eagle hunter: “Jok, Jok, Jok!” [No, No, No!] After Aisholpan won the annual festival, beating out 70 older and more experienced male eagle hunters [in the key speed contest, in which the eagle must fly from a nearby mountaintop to the hunter’s out-stretched arm] with a record-breaking speed of five seconds [her father, a three-time champion, did it in 11] they then said, “OK, but can she hunt? That will be their real test.” Which, of course, she did. How has Aisholpan taken to this newfound fame — she appears somewhat shy on film? I’m pleased to say there hasn’t been a big culture shock. They’re not moving to the city anytime soon, though things have changed. She got a scholarship to one of the best schools in Mongolia and I made them a participant in the film (when it sold to Sony Picture Classics) and she’ll be able to study medicine wherever she wants in the world.
“Life, Animated”
You worked with Owen’s dad, Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, for years before the film. When did you realize Owen would be a good film subject?
When Ron was writing his very personal book about his son, he came to me and said, “I think this would make a great film.” I totally, wholeheartedly agreed.
I knew about the Disney Club where Owen’s classmates learn about life from classic Disney films that help them make sense of the world and what it means to be human and to connect with other people. To me, this is about the power of story, which is literally Owen’s life. Each single moment of his day and every challenge he faces, he finds a Disney clip and story to help him make sense of the world. So he’s like a computer data spreadsheet of Disney film?
Absolutely. He knows every single voice from every film from the ’50s onward and can do all the voices and different characters and knows every single line, ever. He also knows every voiceover actor and every single job, he’s a walking “Wonderful World of Disney” IMDB. Is Owen comfortable with his newfound fame?
He loves it. The other day at a Q&A, someone asked him how he felt being a celebrity and he said, “I’m not a celebrity; I’m just someone who is being celebrated this year.” I’d say Owen is a pure person. And so people respond and react to that. With audiences, I call it the Owen Effect. People are beside themselves, yelling and on their feet and he’s highfiving and takes the stage. What have you learned about people with autism that you didn’t understand prior?
Owen is someone totally sensitive to everything around him. I used to think autistic people lacked empathy — Owen has more. It’s how they process and express it that’s different. He also doesn’t have the bubble around himself we all have; worrying what other people think. He’s not self-conscious at all.