How did you narrow down which stories you’re going to feature?
“We tried to find stories that were a little different, a little off the beaten path and also people who went above and beyond to overcome whatever they went through. Just tonight I called Karen Leibovitch who is a gold medalist. I think she won five or six times. She was paralyzed. Her legs were paralyzed form being in the Army here, and she went on to be like five or six medal winner. She just gave birth to her new baby. She lives a totally normal life.”
Were people willing to talk to you about their personal tragedies? How did you get them to open up?
“Well, some people it’s really tricky. What I will say is I’ve learned a lot of things in the 20 days I’ve been here, but one of the things I’ve learned is some of the clichés just aren’t true. Time is not necessarily what heals. I think that what heals people is perspective. Because some people have told their stories and it’s been years and years and years and they have not gotten over it one bit. And other people, it happened to them last year and they went on and they’re the lead singer in a rock band and they have no legs. It was last year that they got bombed in Lebanon and they don’t care – they’re the lead singer, in the front, representing. I mean, it’s amazing. You just don’t know how they did it. There are people that really are survivors. They have a story to tell and they’re willing to tell you how they got over it. Other people get very political.
Cutting this film is difficult because I do not want to talk about religion or politics. I am here to talk about the psychology and how they can impart something good on someone else who may need some help. I have no interest in the religion or politics and I have to tell you that through the pitching process of this film, I was criticized for not making a Jewish film. ‘How can you make a film in Israel and it not be a Jewish film?’ And my answer was very simple. I can take any documentarian but let’s take Michael Moore because he’s so huge right now. He’s made a few movies now in the U.S. – are those Christian films? Our government is Christian-based, are those films Christian? Absolutely not. I don’t care what government you are under when you’re shooting, that doesn’t mean you have anything to do with politics, and it doesn’t mean you have anything to do with religion. You don’t have to be Jewish or Christian or Muslim or anything else to be able to learn how to overcome trauma.
I think that another thing that’s really interesting is that some of the more severe stories are the ones of people who are actually recovering more, and so is it true that with the bad comes the good and with the good comes the bad? That maybe the worse off you are at some point, even the better you are in the end. I don’t know. There’s the movie The Secret out there and they say, ‘Don’t ever let negative thoughts come into your mind. Don’t focus on the negative.’ But sometimes the negative can bring something positive.”
