hotdocs.caCanada’s annual international documentary film festival, Hot Docs, kicks off tomorrow. E! Online chatted with Toronto filmmaker Alan Zweig about his latest documentary, A Hard Name.
Where Zweig’s hilarious and heartbreaking Mirror Trilogy (Vinyl, I, Curmudgeon and Loveable) presented intimate aspects of the filmmaker’s life and personality, A Hard Name examines a topic almost entirely foreign to him; the lives of ex-convicts.
In his film, seven middle-aged ex-cons speak of their experiences on the inside, and talk about how they’re managing on the outside.
“Somehow you’re making this collective story,” Zweig says of his technique. “You need to go from person to person and make it feel like it’s almost the same story being told in a different face. That’s how I think of it.”
Was he scared to interview subjects with dark and troubled histories?
“I don’t know about scared. Intimidated, I guess. Less by their danger and more by a male competitive thing, in a way…they’re going to see through me. They’re going to see that if I went to jail, I’d be an easy mark. I’m not as tough as them. I haven’t survived what they’ve survived and they’re just going to dismiss me as a weak citizen.”
As it turns out, the ex-convicts interviewed were surprisingly open to offering their stories to Zweig and allowed themselves to be vulnerable.
The world premiere of A Hard Name is on Sunday, May 3rd at the Royal Cinema in Toronto.