In the beginning of Oscar season and just before DOC NYC (the biggest documentary film festival in the U.S.), it’s hard to notice any of the other nonfiction fare that’s percolating out there. But I promise you A River Below, a largely unrecognized film that is out in New York and Los Angeles this weekend, is well worth your attention. It’s putatively about the effort to save the endangered Amazon pink river dolphin but it’s a whole lot more.

Not your typical environmental documentary, the film starts out as a look at the plight of those cute critters but turns into a character study, an expose and an examination of documentary/journalism ethics. In our exchange, I’m not surprised that director Mark Grieco dropped references to two of my favorite documentaries, We Come as Friends and Grizzly Man, when discussing A River Below.

What was your intention when you set out to make this film?

Initially, I was concerned with the idea of it becoming a “Save the dolphin!” activist documentary that would denounce the problem, praise the heroes fighting to save them and, ultimately, only speak to a small audience. The producers and I spoke long about the current state of these types of films and we wanted to do something that would subvert the environmental documentary – to challenge our audience with the complexity of conservation and ethical dilemmas. We set out to make a visually striking, cinematic and dramatic character study of those embroiled in a story that is least expected by an audience going to see a documentary about endangered Amazon river dolphins.

Your film starts as one thing and then becomes something else. Is that how you experienced it? Can you describe the process of keeping up with how events unfolded during the making of the film?

It’s pretty close to how we uncovered the story and that’s how I want audiences to experience it as well. The film starts off in a straightforward way to set up the problem and our characters out there fighting to solve it, lulling the audience into standard territory so that we can really surprise them when the film starts turning in on itself. We took great care with each new revelation to consider its consequences, how best to film it and why it should be filmed. Of course, there are some things we uncovered in a different chronological order than what appears in the film. This is what enrages one character and sets off the film’s conversation about manipulation. It was an amazing coincidence for me because I had stumbled upon a story that dovetailed perfectly with my own concerns with the truth in images, media influence and distortion, performance for the camera, and my role in all of this as a documentary filmmaker. All of this started with the dolphin.

Can you think of other documentaries in which this happens? Did you look at any to inform your way?

I think the best documentaries are the ones in which this kind of thing happens all the time, but it only happens when the filmmaker is open to finding whatever the best story is, not what they want to find. You can sense this right away. I try not to watch anything while I’m in production because the story happening right in front of me has very little to do with a finished film made by somebody else. Before and after filming, I’m constantly watching.

In terms of a suspenseful and thriller documentary reference, I think The Imposter is one of the best in recent years. I also watched several other recent films for different reasons: Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson and Hubert Sauper’s We Come as Friends both spoke to me about the role of the filmmaker in their own story and were good references for looking outside of the frame – laying bare the production behind the image. And I remember watching Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man several times when I struggled with how to handle a uniquely complicated and performative character.

What advice would you give to other filmmakers about how to handle potentially adversarial main characters?

I like to say is that you shouldn’t treat anybody in your film like an adversary. Then it can easily become the film vs. the character and subsequently, the audience vs. the character. This is not to suggest that there aren’t people whose actions and thoughts shouldn’t be questioned, but I don’t think the filmmaker should take on the role of the judge. In fact, we should let our characters question us more openly in the films. Who are we to ask them to be in our film, enter their world, and then judge them?

I think the best advice is that you should just let them speak, literally – don’t talk. Know what you want to ask and why and be patient. Often times, they will act and speak in the way they think you expect them to, then the script runs out and if you’re quiet, the real person will appear. You can poke and prod and nudge gently, but it is a dance and you must let them lead until their music stops.

As an American making a film for American audiences about a developing nation, how did you navigate the ethical boundary of representing your subjects without exploiting them?

There is always this tension and it is a razor’s edge. I’ve made two films in Latin America and I am not from there. The only way I can possibly justify this is that I believe I’m trying to give voice to those often not heard and their stories need to be told. This only happens after a long time gaining trust. In my previous film, Marmato, I lived with the miners for nearly 6 years and in A River Below we worked for a year just to get the permission to shoot with the fishermen who appear in this controversial video. This trust is also on full display here in A River Below – both in its fragility and its loss – and I think more documentary filmmakers should explore these ethical boundaries.

Visit the official Facebook of A River Below for more information and screening dates

Get more documentary film news and features: Subscribe to POV’s documentary blog, like POV on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter and Instagram!In the beginning of Oscar season and just before DOC NYC (the biggest documentary film festival in the U.S.), it’s hard to notice any of the other nonfiction fare that’s percolating out there. But I promise you A River Below, a largely unrecognized film that is out in New York and L.A. this weekend, is well worth your attention. It’s putatively about the effort to save the endangered Amazon pink river dolphin but it’s a whole lot more.

Not your typical environmental documentary, the film starts out as a look at the plight of those cute critters but turns into a character study, an expose and an examination of documentary/journalism ethics. In our exchange, I’m not surprised that director Mark Grieco dropped references to two of my favorite documentaries, We Come as Friends and Grizzly Man, when discussing A River Below.

What was your intention when you set out to make this film?

Initially, I was concerned with the idea of it becoming a “Save the dolphin!” activist documentary that would denounce the problem, praise the heroes fighting to save them and, ultimately, only speak to a small audience. The producers and I spoke long about the current state of these types of films and we wanted to do something that would subvert the environmental documentary – to challenge our audience with the complexity of conservation and ethical dilemmas. We set out to make a visually striking, cinematic and dramatic character study of those embroiled in a story that is least expected by an audience going to see a documentary about endangered Amazon river dolphins.

Your film starts as one thing and then becomes something else. Is that how you experienced it? Can you describe the process of keeping up with how events unfolded during the making of the film?

It’s pretty close to how we uncovered the story and that’s how I want audiences to experience it as well. The film starts off in a straightforward way to set up the problem and our characters out there fighting to solve it, lulling the audience into standard territory so that we can really surprise them when the film starts turning in on itself. We took great care with each new revelation to consider its consequences, how best to film it and why it should be filmed. Of course, there are some things we uncovered in a different chronological order than what appears in the film. This is what enrages one character and sets off the film’s conversation about manipulation. It was an amazing coincidence for me because I had stumbled upon a story that dovetailed perfectly with my own concerns with the truth in images, media influence and distortion, performance for the camera, and my role in all of this as a documentary filmmaker. All of this started with the dolphin.

Can you think of other documentaries in which this happens? Did you look at any to inform your way?

I think the best documentaries are the ones in which this kind of thing happens all the time, but it only happens when the filmmaker is open to finding whatever the best story is, not what they want to find. You can sense this right away. I try not to watch anything while I’m in production because the story happening right in front of me has very little to do with a finished film made by somebody else. Before and after filming, I’m constantly watching.

In terms of a suspenseful and thriller documentary reference, I think The Imposter is one of the best in recent years. I also watched several other recent films for different reasons: Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson and Hubert Sauper’s We Come as Friends both spoke to me about the role of the filmmaker in their own story and were good references for looking outside of the frame – laying bare the production behind the image. And I remember watching Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man several times when I struggled with how to handle a uniquely complicated and performative character.

What advice would you give to other filmmakers about how to handle potentially adversarial main characters?

I like to say is that you shouldn’t treat anybody in your film like an adversary. Then it can easily become the film vs. the character and subsequently, the audience vs. the character. This is not to suggest that there aren’t people whose actions and thoughts shouldn’t be questioned, but I don’t think the filmmaker should take on the role of the judge. In fact, we should let our characters question us more openly in the films. Who are we to ask them to be in our film, enter their world, and then judge them?

I think the best advice is that you should just let them speak, literally – don’t talk. Know what you want to ask and why and be patient. Often times, they will act and speak in the way they think you expect them to, then the script runs out and if you’re quiet, the real person will appear. You can poke and prod and nudge gently, but it is a dance and you must let them lead until their music stops.

As an American making a film for American audiences about a developing nation, how did you navigate the ethical boundary of representing your subjects without exploiting them?

There is always this tension and it is a razor’s edge. I’ve made two films in Latin America and I am not from there. The only way I can possibly justify this is that I believe I’m trying to give voice to those often not heard and their stories need to be told. This only happens after a long time gaining trust. In my previous film, Marmato, I lived with the miners for nearly 6 years and in A River Below we worked for a year just to get the permission to shoot with the fishermen who appear in this controversial video. This trust is also on full display here in A River Below – both in its fragility and its loss – and I think more documentary filmmakers should explore these ethical boundaries.

Visit the official Facebook of A River Below for more information and screening dates

Get more documentary film news and features: Subscribe to POV’s documentary blog, like POV on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter and Instagram!

Published by

Tom Roston
Tom Roston is a guest columnist for POV's documentary blog. He is a former Premiere magazine senior editor, who graduated from Brown University and started his career in journalism at The Nation and then Vanity Fair. Tom's freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter and other publications. He has written several Kindle Singles, including the bestselling Kindle Singles Interview: Ken Burns. Tom's current list of favorite documentaries are: 1. Koyanisqaatsi by Godfrey Reggio; 2. Hoop Dreams by Steve James; 3.Stories We Tell by Sarah Polley; 4.Crumb by Terry Zwigoff; 5. Montage of Heck by Brett Morgen