- Hello,
welcome to a special Q&A recording of I am Greta.
Playing as a special event
at the 45th Toronto International Film Festival.
My name is Tom Powers and I'm TIFFs documentary programmer
celebrating my 15th year at the festival.
I'm honored to be here with the film's director,
Nathan Grossman, coming to us from Stockholm Sweden,
and making his first appearance at TIFF.
I want to give a thanks to our audience
for being a part of TIFF during these unprecedented times.
We are grateful for your support
to keep TIFF going for years to come.
This film is eligible for the People's Choice Award.
You can vote for your favorite films at tiff.net/vote.
And now to Nathan.
Nathan you told me that you're in the very edit room,
where Greta was was put together.
- That's correct Tom.
It feels nice being back here in this room,
it was the one that available here at the office.
So, and it feels like the right room
to address you guys from.
- So your film starts in August, 2018,
before most of the world had heard of Greta Thunberg.
What drew you to her story?
What allowed you to get in
before other people were paying attention?
- Yeah, it was that classical documentary serendipity.
A friend of mine knew the family a little bit.
He'd worked together with them.
He was doing a feature script actually where chatter
character, that was a little bit common to Greta.
So he was in contact with the family and they said to him
that she was going to do this school strike
before the Swedish election.
And I worked a lot with kind of environmental questions
in my documentaries.
I've done a TV series and a short film about that topic.
And he asked if I thought it was interesting
and I decided that I was going to take my camera
and go down to the street,
Rick Scott down, which is a very narrow street,
which is outside the Swedish parliament
to see what kind of a thing it was
because I always been very interested in
seeing if I could portray something with children
and their relationship to climate change.
And I felt like it could be something
for the Swedish election, maybe.
So that was how I came across her in the beginning.
- So a film about Greta Thunberg
could take many different forms.
I'm sure when people come to this film,
maybe they've got some preconception
of what it will be in mind.
How did you choose your focus
about what you were going to keep in
and what you were not going to pay attention to?
- No, but I think from fairly early on,
and I think you've seen that in the movie
that it kind of takes off very quickly.
The local media kind of picks her up very quickly
and she's very articulate about how she speaks
about this matter.
And I got very interested in when I heard her answering,
journalists, you have your headphones on.
As a filmmaker and you hear those answers.
And I heard her speeches in the beginning and I wanted
to understand kind of how her inner monologue looks like.
Because I think everyone has an inner monologue.
You have, I have.
That is kind of the background noise
that kind of spins in our head
that kind of then becomes the words
that comes out of our mouth.
So our fingers, if we write, and I felt that I wanted
to kind of get beyond those words
that just came out in the media and tried
to kind of go down to her point of view
and see if there was a way to do kind of a portrait,
which was very much from her perspective.
So there's us in the film,
there's no interviews with the family and the father.
It's just kind of her narration,
which is based on interviews
and actually based on her diary notes too,
to a very large extent.
And also we worked very hard to kind of getting the camera
down to her perspective.
I'm fairly tall, I'm 190 centimeters
and she's very short.
So I've really scrunched my back
to be able to create that
in inside Greta's world kind of feeding, twice.
which was what I was interested in.
- I think you really achieved that intimacy
and you're present for you difficult moments.
And I wonder how you handled that sensitivity
with the family and with Greta
when she's retreating to her room, understandably,
needing a break from all the pressures of the world.
- Yeah, I think that was a very important part of this.
I started to get to know them very early on before she was,
the big kind of activist star
and we're close friends to that extent.
So we always had this deal that whenever it was something
that they didn't want me to film,
they could always say Nathan you don't film this.
But actually that happened very seldomly
because we've filmed for periods of time
where we were very close contact.
But also as her traveling was so extensive,
I couldn't follow them all the time on every journey.
So there were lots of times
where there were not with me to that extent.
- So I need to ask you about the sailing boat journey
and it looked harrowing just to be a passenger,
let alone trying to film it.
Can you talk about how that was captured?
- Yeah, it was captured by me.
The entire film,
it's now becoming this big film,
but for me, it's, I think always been a small film
in the sense that I've had the camera on my shoulder myself.
I've taken 95% of the audio of myself.
And when the boat ride came up,
I was a bit afraid.
Actually I have no much sailing experience
and I know that going on a regular sailboat
over the Atlantic,
I would say maybe, but on this kind of a race boat,
I was very nervous.
But I said to myself, that hiring
as you can see in the movie,
and as I told, I'm very close to Greta and to her family.
And I felt like to bring in another photographer to do that,
that they were going to do.
I felt that I will go on the trip
and I will shoot this myself.
So it was a very bumpy ride.
It's hard holding the camera stable and those situations.
And we really, of course we had days
which were a little bit less rough,
which aren't, that kind of,
which are actually more boring where you just sit
and just wait, so that the parts of the boat
that are in the movie are of course
the most calm.
When that happened the boat stinks
but it was a very special two weeks on that ocean.
- Wow.
- Around the world we see climate activists who are black
indigenous or people of color
and who don't receive the same attention that Greta does.
And I remember last December at a UN meeting in Madrid,
Greta was trying to put more of an emphasis.
You turn the microphone over to other people.
Can you reflect on the way
that media focuses on Greta?
- Yeah, I also remember the thing
that you're quoting there from Madrid.
And I think there's one scene in the movie,
when she sits with another activist,
I think it's in Belgium.
And she says what's so good about this movement
is that everyone is important.
I think Greta has been very open about
and very focused on that this is not her movement.
It's a movement that is broad, it's inclusive.
And the kind of core of what she's been speaking about
is a lot of kind of climate justice,
which comes down to the chinos.
And I think she says that to Macron as well.
This is something that,
will effect people of color disproportionately.
And so she's very aware of that.
But I think that
she's always
kind of,
I think she's aware of that she
She comes from this privileged background
and that she has this, that it's easier for her.
And I've always respected her for them taking
that kind of time and effort to put that in.
To speak for people that doesn't get the same attention
and kind of shifting away the focus to climate justice kind
of again and again.
Trying as much as she can to the media to say,
look at these other people.
And from my perspective, when I did the film,
as I said, it's from her point of view,
but in the end credits as you know, when we kind of,
in the end of the film can open up the world.
I always from the beginning, wanted to kind of use that
as a chance to kind of show
the variety of tasks and activists that are out there.
- You described that when you came to this project,
you had made other environmental oriented projects before.
So you've been in this headspace before.
But I wonder as Greta lives out her values
in such a strong way,
if you felt personally challenged by
this young person
taking on
positions that many people
in a strong consumer society
are very challenging, not flying on a plane for instance.
- Yeah, that's a great question.
And it's funny, I have two small anecdotes on that,
which is one, is we were actually traveling
on a train and a very early trip that we did,
one of the first ones.
And I bought this lunch salad in Copenhagen,
which was in plastic jars.
And I put it on the table.
And then she, I think, she took a picture
and she posted it on her Instagram.
And those plastic jars where on the table.
It wasn't hers, but it was mine.
And it became like a big,
she's always been attacked as shown in the media
and in the film by right wing media.
And people pick that up,
but she got attacked for my plastic jars.
And they were like, why are you eating from plastic?
And then I just felt like Jesus,
I need to be careful as well in the sense
that it's
so aggressive,
this kind of hatred against her.
That even if I eat from plastic containers,
that kind of spills over to her.
So that was one thing which was just.
I've become more aware of those details,
which I think is good to an extent.
If I don't need to buy lots of plastic stuff,
I can bring my own food in a glass container or whatever.
So that was one big thing.
And of course the second one was at which,
that from the beginning,
I felt that I wanted to do this film without flying.
So it took so much more time.
Because I traveled on electric cars
and trains with them all the time.
And the only flight I actually took was back from the US.
Because you heard about the sailing trip.
I spent one way over there,
so I saved myself the back way back.
So we really tried to make the film
in that same kind of point of view as she has.
- You were filming Greta during this time
when more of the media started paying attention.
What was that like for you as a filmmaker
who had started out relatively quiet with her
and you had to compete in a way with lots of other people
looking for the same access.
- Yeah, I think this movie would have never had
the same kind of tone if we
wouldn't get to know each other so early on,
I think that you have the time
to kind of get connected before all these frenzy starts.
And then you kind of
you were more like team going into the frenzy
than an external part that tries to kind of portray it.
So I think that was very important have for me.
But I think also I decided very quickly
that I was not going to try to kind of keep anyone away.
But I was interested in taking more step back,
I think there were lots of scenes in the film
where we actually can benefit from coming from the media,
kind of coming in and, and trying to cover her.
Because that helped me out with not having
to do talking with her.
I could use other media comments
and surf a little bit on that,
which was nice for both me and Greta
didn't have to repeat answers to me.
She said it to them.
I fell behind her back.
- Well, it also lets us see the kind of pressure
that a young person or any person would be under having
to answer those questions on a constant basis
and in a backdrop like the UN summit.
And I feel like the film gives us
a really privileged view
of those pressures.
I wonder if you can elaborate on anything more
that you've witnessed
spending this time with Greta's family,
that maybe it's hard to see from the outside
about what it's like to live when you have
that much attention on you.
- No, but I think it's one thing
which was also on the comment on,
when do you stop filming
and where do you kind of create that line.
Because for me, I tried to do documentaries
as ethical as possible.
It's a hard genre in that sense.
But of course we always had this thing in Swedish.
We we say (speaks in foreign language)
Which means now we take evening
in the sense that now this day is over.
And I think, and I was very strict with that.
So, I think lots of the discussions
and the more chill outs that we had,
after maybe like a eight o'clock,
that's not part of the film.
And I think she's been very strict with that when it comes
to all her things that she does.
She has that thing that she says that, okay,
but now this day, the 27 to 29th of September is done.
It's eight and I will have these hours, ,
for myself before I kind of go to bed.
And I kept that was when I stopped filming
and then everything was off the record
and she didn't do any more interviews.
Didn't look on our phone.
I think that's a really smart thing
that we could actually learn from her.
Talk about.
- Absolutely good, good expression.
We'll have to find an English equivalent for that.
Well, Nathan we're so honored to be showcasing
this film for its first appearance in North America.
I know I watched the film with my 10 year old son
who would normally prefer to be watching the Simpsons
than the subtitle documentary.
But I saw how engrossed he was.
And I know that, millions of people are going
to find that in this film.
So thank you very much for being here
and bringing this film for us.
- Thank you, Tom.
It feels so nice to be able to show it
to the audience in North America
and starting out with TIFF.
It feels like the right platform.
So I'm so happy that you have it.