Laura Green’s shorts have played at numerous festivals, including Palm Springs Shortfest, Aspen Shortsfest, Sarasota Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, and Outfest.

Anna Moot-Levin’s award-winning film “Track by Track” premiered at Slamdance and is now in distribution with Sproutflix. Her other credits include the Academy Award-winning documentary “Inside Job” and “The Making of Gabrieli.”

“The Providers” will premiere at the 2018 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival on April 6.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

LG&AML: Set against the backdrop of the physician shortage and opioid epidemic in rural America, “The Providers” follows three healthcare providers in northern New Mexico. They work at El Centro, a group of safety-net clinics that offer care to all who walk through the doors, regardless of ability to pay.

Amidst personal struggles that reflect those of their patients, the journeys of the providers unfold as they work to reach rural Americans who would otherwise be left out of the healthcare system.

With intimate access, the documentary shows the transformative power of providers’ relationships with marginalized patients.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

LG&AML: We are both children of doctors and share a lifelong fascination with medicine. We grew up with dinner-table discussions about the unequal and often unreasonable American healthcare system.

Back in 2014, we heard a radio story about how even after the ACA, many Americans remained unable to access care in rural communities where doctors are often few and far between. As we spent more than a hundred days filming in New Mexico over the course of three years, we saw the ways the healthcare problems in these small towns are entwined with the broader challenges facing rural America such as rural brain-drain and aging populations.

Through making this film we witnessed firsthand the insidious connections between poverty, lack of opportunity, illness, and addiction.

W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?

LG&AML: While the film addresses many aspects of the crisis in rural healthcare, the core of the film speaks to the profoundly positive impact of human connection within healthcare, particularly for people who have been marginalized.

In different ways, each of the providers in the film connects deeply with their patients and the communities they serve. While nobody disputes that clinicians must excel at the “science” of medicine — diagnosis and prescription — the film illuminates the ways that the “art” of patient interaction can itself be healing.

As is articulated in the film, it is sometimes feeling cared about that makes the greatest difference for the most vulnerable patients. We hope to leave audiences thinking about the ways that healthcare which centers human connection can heal both medical and social ills.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

LG&AML: One mentor said to us that a director’s first film is often multiple films jammed into one. While we planned to structure the film around three healthcare providers from the outset, during production we were drawn in many unexpected directions — from the stories of the many phenomenal patients we met, to the funding crisis Chris Ruge’s program faced.

We ultimately decided to feature five patients, in addition to the three providers — which is a lot of people! It was extremely difficult to figure out a structure that could support so many arcs, and we went through much trial and error in the edit. It was very important to us to represent all of our characters as multi-dimensional, but having so many storylines to follow, we fought against spreading the film too thin.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

LG&AML: ITVS co-production funding through Open Call has been the primary source of funding for the film. However, we did not receive major funding until almost two years into making the film. It was a long struggle to keep the film moving forward and capture the events unfolding in our subjects’ lives during those two years.

We managed to get by on money from our freelance gigs, donations from friends and family, and the tremendous generosity of our subjects who hosted us at their homes during production, which dramatically reduced our costs. We also became very adept at figuring out how to accumulate Southwest Airlines points to get us back and forth from Albuquerque. We acted as our own two-person crew, shooting and recording sound, so we did not need to hire other crew members during early production.

After we shot a substantial amount of material, we decided to take a summer off from production to focus solely on editing our work sample and writing our application for ITVS. This approach ended up working well for us.

W&H: What does it mean for you to have your film play at Full Frame?

LG&AML: We are absolutely thrilled to be having the World Premiere of “The Providers” at Full Frame. Laura attended Full Frame last year through the BAVC Media Maker’s Fellowship and had one of her best festival experiences ever.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

LG&AML: Best advice: “Be patient.” Making documentaries, particularly a vérité film like ours, takes a tremendous amount of time and patience — and some luck — on many fronts. It cannot be emphasized enough that asking someone to allow you to film — and later broadcast — intimate moments of their life requires a deep trust which we as filmmakers must earn. It also engenders a responsibility to tell that story as best we can. Life cannot be hurried, and it often takes years for the events that your documentary needs to unfold.

Worst advice: “In a two-person crew, you must have one shooter and one sound-recordist.” Over the years of making this film as a two-person crew of directors, we can’t tell you how many times we have been asked who shoots. We are both proficient shooters and sound recordists, and this turned out to be the best choice for us, allowing us to trade-off and power through 16-hour days of shooting.

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?

LG&AML: The reality is that no matter how hard you try not to, it is inevitable that as a film director you will make decisions that others disagree with. We are big believers that being kind, compassionate, and open to feedback from all those involved in the making of your film is not only ethical, but leads to better artistic results. However, at a certain point, we found it not only impossible to please everybody, but that focusing too much on doing so was becoming detrimental to the film.

Over the course of directing a film, you will have difficult conversations, and we encourage you to try to stay focused on your own vision, ethics, and artistic sensibility, rather than pleasing the many — and often contradictory — voices you will encounter in making your film.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

LG: “The Gleaners and I” directed by Agnès Varda. It is a beautiful film, and at once stands as an empathetic portrait of those France has left behind, and an allegorical exploration of the documentary process and form itself.

AML: “The Hitch-Hiker” directed by Ida Lupino, who was the only woman directing films in 1950s Hollywood.

W&H: Hollywood and the global film industry are in the midst of undergoing a major transformation. Many women — and some men — in the industry are speaking publicly about their experiences being assaulted and harassed. What are your thoughts on the #TimesUp movement and the push for equality in the film business?

LG&AML: We are thrilled that Full Frame’s lineup this year is almost 50 percent directed by women, and we are grateful to be working in documentary, an area that has long been more welcoming to female directors than the field as a whole. However, gendered dynamics are nevertheless pervasive throughout documentary production.

We see many of the largest budget, high profile documentaries directed by men, year after year, often with a female producer in a supporting, but less recognized role.

We are encouraged by funding initiatives that focus on independent female directors, such as Chicken & Egg, Fork Films, and Women in Film. However, the reality is that the most widely viewed and profitable documentaries, including the overwhelming majority of Oscar-nominated feature documentaries the past two years, have predominantly had male directors.