Directors: ‘The Vow’ a more complex story
They want you to see NXIVM was not just a ‘sex cult’
Jehane Noujaim understands better than most why so many intelligent, accomplished people were drawn to NXIVM, the self-help group, multilevel marketing company and supposed “sex cult” whose leader, Keith Raniere, was convicted last year of sex trafficking.
She was one of them.
Before she and Karim Amer directed the HBO documentary series “The Vow,” which chronicles the rise and fall of the group, Noujaim had taken some of NXIVM’s self-improvement classes.
It began in 2007 when Noujaim — director of documentaries “Control Room” and “Startup.com ” — met Sara Bronfman, daughter of billionaire Edgar Bronfman, at a conference at Richard Branson’s private retreat in the Virgin Islands.
The heiress was a prominent figure within NXIVM and spoke highly of the organization’s personal development program. A few years later at the Cannes Film Festival, Noujaim befriended Mark Vicente, co-director of the spiritual documentary “What the Bleep Do We Know?” and also a highranking member.
“Here was another successful, thoughtful person who was telling me about NXIVM,” Noujaim said in an interview with Amer, her husband and collaborator.
In 2010, she decided to travel to Albany, New York — the group’s home base — to take a five-day seminar. She ignored the warnings of a loved one who believed that NXIVM was a cult; Noujaim was interested in what the group had to offer.
She ended up having to leave early, for work obligations. Soon after, she met Amer, and the two set to work on a documentary called “The Square,” about the Egyptian revolution. They also got married and had three children, including twins, within two years.
“I did a pretty crazy thing,” Noujaim said of this period in her life. “There was a lot of pain associated with being up all night and trying to have a career.”
So in 2017, with encouragement from Vicente, she decided to finish her NXIVM course in Los Angeles. But when Vicente failed to show up at the party she threw to celebrate completion of the program, she knew something was amiss.
As she later learned, Vicente and his wife, actress Bonnie Piesse, were beginning to make startling discoveries about the organization. Among the revelations: Some of Raniere’s most devoted followers had formed a secret society, known as DOS, in which women were branded, coerced into sexual slavery and put on highly restrictive diets.
The filmmakers followed Vicente, Piesse and survivor Sarah Edmondson over the next few years as they extricated themselves from NXIVM and decided to speak out publicly against Raniere and his inner circle.
Including extensive archival video and audio recordings, “The Vow” delves into NXIVM’s curious rituals — including color-coded sashes worn to indicate one’s rank within the organization and volleyball games where Raniere would expound on his philosophies. But the nine-part docuseries, which premiered Aug. 23, also offers a sympathetic portrait of the spiritual seekers who were duped by the alleged con man. And, as Amer and Noujaim say, that was a key part of their mission.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: A lot of people in “The Vow” were filmmakers or actors. Is there something particular about NXIVM that appealed to creative people?
Noujaim: I asked myself that a lot. When you’re a filmmaker or when you’re an actor, you’re only as good as your last acting role, or you’re only good as the last film you made. There’s no tried-and-true path to success.
Amer: I think what was attractive to a lot of people about the framework of NXIVM and ESP (Executive Success Program, the seminars run by NXIVM) was this idea of measurable results — that you could take areas of your life like selfesteem and pain and joy and put them into a system that you could understand a lot more and have more of a scientific approach. I think that is particularly appealing to artists and creatives because in many ways, every creative wants to channel that spark, your creative voice, whatever you call it.
But what if there was a way to actually harness it, actually be able to be in control of it like you would a horse, as opposed to it being like this random gust that comes every once in a while?
People who dare to dream, who dare to seek, should not be cast away as if something’s wrong with them. I think it’s quite the opposite. I think when we cast them away, it says more about us than it does them.
A lot of times things go off the rails. The act of seeking in itself shouldn’t be seen as a horrible thing, even when it has bad consequences.
Q: One of the things we see ... is people struggling to separate what was valuable about the organization from all the alleged abuse. Was there anything you took from it that you found valuable?
N: There’s an exercise where you’re asked to write about a person that you dislike or you feel has thwarted you in some way. By the end of this exercise, you are truly standing in that person’s shoes and having empathy for that person.
What I would like to say to all the people that are a part of NXIVM now that have questions: This series will allow them, like that exercise did, to step into the shoes of people who they feel are destroying their lives, like Mark and Sarah. I think exercises like that are extremely valuable, especially given the world we’re living in right now.
Q: What was the biggest challenge for you in making the series?
N: The priority was to humanize the story, to take a story that is sensationalized across the headlines, and to put nuance and a human face to it.
I think the most difficult part has been watching the pain of people on all sides of this who believed in goodness, who dared to dream, dared to think they could change their lives, to see the pain they feel in being associated with what has been purely relegated to a sex cult rather than this much more complex story.
It was very personal and difficult because I did have dear friends on both sides of this. I believe it’s the job of the filmmaker to create the space for debate and allow these different sides to be understood.