It is the greatest story
that's never been told.
Like, people may have an idea
of what the Paralympics is,
but they might not actually know.
Like, the whole history behind it,
how it started from one man, one vision,
getting World War II veterans healthy,
and then he decided
to create the Paralympics.
And now, it's like the third largest
sporting games in the world.
I said, "That's so important to tell,
and we need to share it."
Coming into this, before any work is done,
what was the film in your head
that you wanted to make
specific to the Paralympics?
I remember vividly.
We were with our...
Our previous film was called McQueen,
which was until recently on Netflix,
and we went to Russia
to do a kind of like a premiere,
special screenings in Russia of McQueen.
One of our executive producers,
when we told him we're in St. Petersburg,
as we were already talking
about the Paralympic film then,
he said, "You have to read this story
about a girl who was born
with spina bifida,
put into an orphanage and adopted
and brought to the United States."
And we were reading this
in a cafe in St. Petersburg,
reading the story--
We were wailing.
We were not reading, Peter.
We were crying our eyes out.
I was reading and you were wailing.
It was quite embarrassing.
And then we started looking around
and, you know,
a lot of people had amazing stories,
how they got to there.
The challenge of this film
was more selecting less people.
You need, for an audience
to really identify and feel in a film,
you need to have enough people
for the spread,
but at the same time,
not too many that it gets too diluted.
Plus, as Tatyana rightly said,
so at the beginning,
Ludwig Guttmann's backstory
to get to where he is,
as a young man with a young family,
Jewish refugee in the UK,
somehow getting saved by the UK
and given an opportunity.
But he didn't just use the opportunity.
He harnessed it and changed the world.
Considering how incredible that story is,
you feel there should be
a million movies all about him
and, you know,
he should be one of those people.
I said that in an interview yesterday.
It's kind of incredible that you're almost
reading it for the first time.
I watched Crip Camp for the first time.
I'd said, "I won't watch it
while working on this film."
It's a very different film.
I didn't want to be...
Anyway, Crip Camp has these scenes,
and I don't know if you remember them,
at this institution in New York
in the 1970s
with people with severe disabilities
kind of just lying naked on the floor.
This is 1970s New York.
And you kind of I think,
you know, without Guttmann,
that scene would have been played
all over the world.
It would be probably the case in the UK.
Maybe not. I hope not now,
but certainly in the 1970s, the 80s, etc.
Not now in the UK or the US,
but it is happening in certain countries.
-It is happening in certain countries.
-Yes.
The fight is still on worldwide.
Something that really struck me was...
the kind of vulnerability
of people telling their story,
because I think we often hear,
particularly when the Paralympics
is kind of on,
there's always a tendency,
I guess, to go superhuman,
and we don't hear
the kind of stories behind it.
I think the way you guys tackled it,
to let people tell their story
really authentically was really unique.
Yeah, I think my message has always been,
ever since I was like a young child,
it's not...
I learned this growing up
in the orphanage.
Life isn't about what you don't have,
it's what you do with the gifts
that you're given, right?
So, me living life in an orphanage,
it was just me, I had just me,
I didn't have a wheelchair,
I didn't have this or that.
So, I think that
was kind of like a little silver lining,
was that, like, I figured out
how to do things on my own.
That's what each athlete has figured out.
They are using the gifts that they have
to their ability
and to their advantage, so...
What really excited Pete and I
was to have the opportunity
to have Ellie Cole
looking like a kickass, beautiful,
sexy, amazing athlete in the water
on top of having
the archive footage of it.
We were really keen the way we showed you
as well when we interviewed you
that you felt beautiful as a woman,
but as well, beautiful as an athlete
at the top of your game.
And I'm so glad that you said that
because it was mentioned
in a couple of interviews, like,
"Tatyana, do you think this film is...
Do you think these athletes
are portrayed too beautiful?"
And I was like, "No! Not at all!"
I was like, "It's actually like
you can see an alter ego.
People don't understand that people
with disabilities can dress up.
You know, they have this image of what
we're supposed to look like, right?
Tatyana, I guess my question for you
is how do you feel
when you have to be on camera
and very public about your personal life
and your family life?
The more that you feel uncomfortable,
I've always believed,
you're on the right path.
The reason why people were so vulnerable
is because we are trying to say, like,
"Hey, we are actually very relatable
to everyone in society."
Because a lot of people,
you know, hide their struggles
or some disabilities are not visible,
but everyone goes through that struggle.
They were like,
"We know you can do it. You can do it."
And I'm like,
"No, I have no arms. Please help me."
And they're like,
"No, sorry. You'll figure it out."
Athletes with tons of money,
like football here in the US
or like baseball,
sometimes you're like,
"How am I relatable to that person?"
People support the team
because it's all about, you know,
the big shebang, the big victory,
but I think it's more than that in sport.
So, I think that's why athletes
were willing to be a little bit
more vulnerable and honest.
How do you get people to be that honest?
People are really honest in this film
about "I wasn't in the shape of my life
and actually I wasn't good at Beijing."
Like, athletes never say that.
People were really vulnerable and honest.
I just wondered
how you got that from people.
We kind of wanted this to be for everyone
and that was very important to us.
And one thing that Sir Philip said to us
very early on,
he said, "Don't talk about
disabled people, don't collectivise.
It's about individuals,
and it's about showing
each person's humanity."
And then, you know, we took that to heart.
And when we shot interviews,
we show the first time...
Well, in the interviews,
we generally show the close-up first,
so that you engage with the person,
with the face, the emotion of that person.
We reveal the disability, the wheelchair,
the prosthetic in the wide shot.
If you want to talk technically,
the way we were,
we actually always shoot
with two cameras -
one close-up, one wide shot -
and we sit very uncomfortably
right in the middle of the cameras,
so really close to the cameras.
And we engage...
Our question doesn't become a question,
it becomes a conversation.
And then, the other one of us,
because we take it in turns,
sits behind the monitors
a little further back
and pays attention to the editorial
elements that we might be missing
or something that
we should be digging into more
or something suddenly
we didn't think about comes along.
So, we almost split that,
which I don't think it would be possible
if you had one single director.
Also, just one other thing
is that we always take care
that we make sure that we've met.
We met Tatyana in London...
in which you were slightly also just
making sure that weren't two muppets
and that we going to do a good job
on this film.
But we met in London and then we hung out
and spent time together in Illinois
before we started shooting.
So, there's a kind of
an intimacy between us,
a feeling that we can
ask each other anything
and, you know, it becomes very natural.
We do that with everyone.
I think it's very important.
Whenever the shit hits the fan,
then our movement's gonna come around
and say,
"Hey, you're not doing this to us.
We're going have our games
and we are going
to get our message out there,
and we are going to help change society
and make this planet
a better place to live on."
