Rachel Lears is a director, writer, producer, and cinematographer. She is a 2013 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow and director of the Emmy-nominated documentary “The Hand That Feeds,” which was broadcast on PBS’ “America Reframed” in 2016. “The Hand that Feeds” won awards at Full Frame, DOC NYC, AFI Docs, and numerous other festivals as well as critical acclaim during its 2015 theatrical run. Her cinematography credits include “Netizens,” a 2018 documentary directed by Cynthia Lowen.

“Knock Down the House” will premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on January 27.

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

RL: “Knock Down the House” is the story of four working-class women taking on political machines in four very different American landscapes as they run insurgent campaigns for Congress in 2018. All of them were motivated by personal experiences to embark on this roller coaster journey.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from the Bronx, was working as a bartender when we started filming, and had to work double shifts in a restaurant to save her family home from foreclosure during the financial crisis. Businesswoman Amy Vilela of Las Vegas lost a loved one to a preventable medical condition, and the anger she felt about America’s broken health care system motivated her to run. Cori Bush, a nurse from near Ferguson, MO, was drawn into the streets when the police shooting of an unarmed black man brought protests and tanks into her neighborhood. And Paula Jean Swearengin of West Virginia witnessed the environmental effects of the coal industry take the lives of many family members and friends in her community.

The film follows these candidates against the backdrop of our current, volatile historical moment in American politics. Our characters do not have experience in political office, and they refuse to take corporate money for their campaigns. But they work together and draw strength from each other as part of a rising movement of insurgent candidates, and the film ultimately tells the story of one of the most surprising political upsets in recent history.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

RL: After the 2016 election, I wanted to tell a big story about people changing American politics in big ways and about power—how it works and how to achieve it. I wanted to tell a story about people working to build solidarity across social divides, and about the intersections of economics and injustice based on race, gender, and other aspects of identity.

I began working with Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, groups that were building a new path to Congress for ordinary people. The idea for the film was to cover the story of charismatic working people without political experience or corporate backing, running on unified slate together as a movement.

We chose to focus on subjects who would be compelling to watch win or lose and who had strong backstories of personal experience of injustice motivating them to run. We also decided to frame the project around the emerging story of women running in 2018 and chose a cast that reflected a range of perspectives, issues, and geography.

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

RL: “Knock Down the House” is a film about hope that challenges the narratives that create cynicism and despair. The film is ultimately about power and how to build it in yourself and in the world, and what it takes to make the politically impossible possible. I want viewers to think about what it would mean for our democracy to have more courageous working people with integrity representing us in government, running on bold agendas that would create a more just and equitable country.

In particular the film highlights the intrinsic relationship between money in politics and representation in politics. We’ll never have a diverse array of voices in government until we challenge the campaign finance system that assumes a candidate needs personal access to millions of dollars to run a viable campaign.

The film tells the story of a new model of grassroots campaigns supported by national networks of small dollar donors and volunteers—a model enacted at the congressional level for the first time in 2018 through the movement documented by “Knock Down the House.”

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

RL: I had an 8-month-old baby when I started making this film. He was one during our first production trip and two during most of production and post in 2018. Creating this film with a young child was definitely the biggest challenge. I could not have done it without collaborating from the start with my husband, Robin Blotnick, who is writer, producer, and editor on the film, and also our producer Sarah Olson, who joined the team in spring 2018. Robin and I traveled the country together with our son Max in tow as I shot the film primarily alone, though we also had two additional cinematographers in New York and Las Vegas, and sound people for certain events.

Robin got a jump on editing during production and was able to dive headfirst into it in July—we never could have finished the film in time for Sundance without an editor on board who was as thoroughly invested in the project as he was. Along the way, we supported each other as co-parents, spending as much time with our son as we could. We’re of course grateful to our son’s grandparents and day care provider as well. It’s not an easy way to make a film, but independent docs are never easy, and as a working mother, I can’t imagine doing it another way.

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

RL: We started with sweat equity and personal debt, shooting and developing between freelance jobs, followed by a very modest Kickstarter campaign in March 2018, which brought in over 400 backers and launched the project in earnest. Then we were fortunate to finance the rest of the film through major film grants and dozens of private donors large and small.

I had a lot of experience fundraising through grants from my graduate work in Anthropology and from our previous film, and we also brought on producing partners who helped source financing from organizations and individuals.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

RL: I became a filmmaker in my mid-20s while in a PhD program for Cultural Anthropology. My background before that was in music and photography. I fell in love with the art of documentary because it allowed me to do everything I cared about all at once—to engage directly with ideas, politics, and people, and to craft stories in a collage-like way using visual, sonic, musical, and verbal elements.

Beyond this, I also really wanted to make art that connected with diverse audiences on multiple levels—aesthetic, emotional, intellectual—and documentary film allows this.

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

RL: A lot of the best advice I’ve heard that applies to filmmaking comes from mindfulness practice, including the advice to avoid comparing your own trajectory to anyone else’s. Everyone’s path is unique, and just because you haven’t achieved this, that, or the other thing by a certain point in a certain way, doesn’t mean you can’t build a career and make great work.

Worst advice: I heard second hand from a colleague that a renowned documentary filmmaker once advised aspiring filmmakers at an event a few years ago to “marry rich.” I think this is horrible advice because it automatically suggests that people from working- and middle-class backgrounds can’t seriously expect to become filmmakers through their own creative merits unless they happen to gain access to someone else’s inherited wealth. Where would we be if we weren’t working to support a rich array of diverse voices behind the camera? There’s movement in this direction and as a field we need to work hard to support people from all walks of life becoming filmmakers because there is huge value in stories told from multiple perspectives.

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

RL: It’s been very helpful for me to think of balance not as some goal of equilibrium, but a process, an activity more like surfing or skiing –not that I excel at either of those– where you constantly adjust to keep going and get up again when you fall. Instead of imagining that it’s possible to have a life where everything is in perfect balance—with just the right amount of work, family time, fun, self-care—it’s helpful to me to remember that balancing these things is always a process, and it’s always possible to make small adjustments to help things feel more balanced even when times are tough.

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

RL: I love Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s work. “Jesus Camp” was inspiring to me when I was starting to work in documentary, and I’ve enjoyed all their films that I’ve seen. I think their films are sensitive portraits of communities, combining ethnographic attention to detail with gripping storytelling and beautiful production values.

I also really love the work of Dutch filmmaker Heddy Honigmann, such as “Underground Orchestra.” Her films usually start out being straightforwardly about one subjeect, but end up being truly about something else entirely—themes emerge so the film works on multiple levels. I’m trying to do all these things in “Knock Down the House.”

W&H: It’s been a little over a year since the reckoning in Hollywood and the global film industry began. What differences have you noticed since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched?

RL: When I was growing up, more often than not I identified with male characters in books and movies, and that had real negative consequences for me as I imagined how to make my way through the world. I think now we’re seeing the effects of the #MeToo and TimesUp movements across our society, and it’s harrowing to hear some of these stories, but the courage of the people who have spoken out is having an effect in all forms of representation in entertainment and politics. Simultaneously, we’re seeing more diversity on screen, behind the scenes in film production, and in our representative democracy. There’s a lot of work left to do, but it’s an amazing time of flux to be living in.