Dream come true
Ottawa filmmaker’s documentary has its premiere at the White House
Standing in front of the West Wing of the White House Komal Minhas beams so brightly, it’s like looking directly at the sun.
Never mind that the 26-year-old from Ottawa-via-Grande Prairie, Alta., has recently undergone cancer surgery.
And never mind that the ensuing recovery set back her dreams and left her furiously bedridden in Ottawa for weeks, far from her New York City base, where she runs a startup for her first film, Dream, Girl, a co-production with director and business partner, Erin Bagwell, 29.
Never mind all that, because on this particular day — May 26, to be precise — Minhas and Bagwell achieved something that not even they, with their Big Hairy Audacious Goals, even once considered possible: They premièred their first film at the White House.
“Dream, Girl is my life’s passion personified and Erin is the other half of my brain. For three years, we’ve been building this featurelength film and a movement that will help girls and women unleash their potential in the global economy,” she says of the project, which began when she contacted Bagwell out of the blue after reading about the Dream, Girl Kickstarter campaign while on holiday in Italy.
Sight unseen, Minhas immediately committed her last $10,000 for the project.
The premise is simple, but inspires an instant, visceral response: If you can name entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, who are their female counterparts? They exist — but usually well below the radar. The documentary attempts to find out why, by tracing the efforts of five women, recounting their struggles and victories.
Which is how Minhas and Bagwell came to find themselves at the White House in the first place.
Originally set to be shown as part of a 5,000-delegate White House Summit on the United State of Women — hosted by Michelle Obama through the White House’s Council for Women and Girls and the National Women’s Business Council — the screening initially fell through when the event was moved to June 14.
Disappointed, but determined to refocus on the world première of the film on June 9 in New York City, Minhas was then surprised when the White House called back a few weeks later, this time asking for the film to be the centrepiece of a private, 190-person screening for women entrepreneurs, followed by a round table discussion led by Diana Doukas, the director of the White House Business Council.
Framed by the story of their struggle to make the movie, the documentary circles around the thesis that women in business represent a growing economic power, yet face unseen barriers to things like access to capital. Of the $255 billion e-commerce transactions happening worldwide, for example, 65 per cent are women’s transactions. In the U.S., women start 1,200 new businesses daily, a number that has grown exponentially over the past decade.
That the film was ultimately made through crowd funding, family support and investors such as New York-based Gotham Gal Ventures, and then screened at the White House, staggers Minhas. Twitter Global also recently inked a deal to hold 14 screenings of the film worldwide. She laughs in disbelief. “Erin and I are first-timers. Our first film aired at the White House! And I have cancer! It’s so crazy!”
In fact, if any part of the Dream, Girl story is straight out of Hollywood, it would be her cancer diagnosis.
Having noticed two fatty lumps on the back on her leg, she checked in at an Ottawa clinic last December. The doctor told her and partner Mitch Pennell not to worry: He could excise the lumps without too much drama. Relieved, Minhas asked if they could film him cutting open the lumps, because we’re such oddballs.
And that’s where things got serious. Slicing into the second lump, the doctor paused and remarked, “Oh, this is unusual. You see this, one in 1,000 ... no, one in a million. This is a dermatofibroma.”
During a doctor’s appointment months later, she inquired about the pathology report, because she’d lost track of a letter sent regarding the results.
“I remember him saying, ‘So no one’s talked about this to you? It’s a sarcoma.’ I said, ‘that’s cancer, right?’ He kept talking and I felt so overwhelmed. I couldn’t get anything else out of my mouth.”
Back at the White House, after the screening, Minhas poses with her parents in front of the West Wing, while family members mill around, delighting in everything they see. She watches them for a moment. Her father, Yadvinder Singh Minhas, was brought up a Punjabi farm and never dreamt he would move to Canada in 1974, start a logging company and become one of the few Big L Liberal families in Alberta.