Rachel Lears is a documentary director, producer, and cinematographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Rachel’s most recent feature documentary, Netflix’s “Knock Down the House,” won the US Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for an Oscar and nominated for an Emmy in 2020. Her previous feature, PBS’ “The Hand That Feeds,” co-directed with Robin Blotnick, won numerous festival awards and was nominated for an Emmy in 2017.

“To the End” is screening at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, which is running online from January 20-30. More information can be found on the fest’s website.

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

RL: “To the End” tells an epic story of historic shifts in climate politics in the United States, through the interwoven narratives of four young women of color who are key players behind the Green New Deal (GND), an ambitious plan to stop the climate crisis and address racial and economic justice in the process. The film features Varshini Prakash, the Executive Director of Sunrise Movement; Alexandra Rojas, the Executive Director of Justice Democrats; Rhiana Gunn-Wright, a policy writer known as one of the architects of the Green New Deal; and the GND’s best-known champion, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“To the End” builds upon my last film, “Knock Down the House,” but is a darker and more complex story. The climate crisis can be so overwhelming that it leads to feelings of despair or even cynicism. Our protagonists confront this reality head-on and find the courage to act in the face of it.

The film presents this compelling and urgent narrative in a cinematic style that plays with tropes of dystopian science fiction and the utopian visioning that activists and organizers must do to imagine and build alternative futures.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

RL: In Fall 2018, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report stating that, in order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming, the world must enact “rapid, far reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” before 2030. This apolitical group of scientists aimed their work directly at world leaders, emphasizing that it’s physically and technically feasible to achieve this— the key missing ingredient is political will.

I was immediately drawn to exploring how this political will could be built because, for most of my career, I’ve been making films that explore the nature of power and how impossible things become possible through movement organizing. I’m also the mother of a young child and very personally invested in hoping that the climate crisis can be contained.

During post-production for “Knock Down the House,” I began conversations with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her team about this project, which soon grew to include the other protagonists and focus on the Green New Deal—the only policy proposal that would actually meet the scale of the action that scientists demand.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

RL: The film begins in 2018, but its final scenes took place in late December 2021, and the film really speaks to this moment. Since the onset of the pandemic, the relationships among all the crises we face have become more intuitively clear: the pandemic, economic inequality, racial injustice, political violence, and the climate crisis — all are interlocking. Many people feel a sense of staring into the abyss, and it’s become commonplace to reference dystopia in describing the United States or the world.

While the situation is grave, we haven’t reached the apocalypse yet — and there’s still so much we can do to build a better world. But there is no path to stopping the global climate crisis that doesn’t involve engaging with politics in the United States. “To the End” frames our protagonists’ fight for a just and sustainable future as an epic coming of age story of courageous young women confronting multiple dystopian dimensions — climate disaster itself, the corporate media, and the Kafkaesque world of Washington, DC politics.

By drawing audiences into a cinematic world that references the genres of science fiction and political thriller with choices of music, color, lighting, and sound, I want the film to allow viewers to emotionally process the existential anxiety of this historical moment, and imagine themselves in new roles to be part of changing history.

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

RL: There were many challenges to making this film, but one of the biggest was certainly the pandemic. Our protagonists did not slow down, so we couldn’t just put the project on hold, but most of their activities in 2020 and early 2021 moved completely online, which posed significant difficulties for observational filming. We decided to construct intimate visual scenes of pandemic life in homes and outside, with interviews conducted remotely on audio equipment we sent to the participants.

We also decided to use archival footage throughout the film in ways that are framed by the main characters’ cinematic point of view, as if they are either viewing this footage on a device or remembering it. This helped with a number of sequences that we couldn’t cover observationally and helped the film maintain the feeling of vérité coverage.

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

RL: This film received several grants, and we were very fortunate to be funded primarily by two sets of private investors, Impact Partners and Lost Gang Films West. Our executive producers at Story Syndicate helped bring on Impact Partners at the development stage, and then Impact Partners in turn helped bring on Lost Gang to help finish the film.

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

RL: I became a filmmaker later than most, in my mid-20s. At that time I was in graduate school for a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, and I also had a background in photography and music. I fell in love with the documentary art form because it allowed me to engage deeply with visual and aural aesthetic registers while also engaging with ideas, people, and stories. I love that it’s a form based on collage—the actually existing material, the true story, and the archive all shape the creative process.

At the same time, I think there’s vastly more creativity and artistry involved in documentary filmmaking than most people realize.  It’s not simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time with a camera, though that itself takes quite a bit of creative work—there are as many aesthetic choices involved in nonfiction storytelling as in fiction.

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

RL: Best advice: Do something every day that might lead to something in six months.

Worst advice: Hire someone else to shoot your films. This might be great advice for some, but for me, it’s been crucial to my style and workflow to shoot the bulk of my own material myself. Working as a one-person crew allows incredible intimacy and flexibility.

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

RL: This is more for aspiring directors: Learn to shoot, edit, and ask people for money. Later on, you can decide what you want to specialize in, but if you can do those things you can start making films on your own. Seek out other kindred filmmaking spirits to collaborate with—it’s really helpful to have someone else on the team who is as dedicated to the project as you are, especially in the early stages.

If you don’t feel comfortable in — or get annoyed by — cis-straight male-dominated film spaces, seek out networks of other women, non-binary, and LGBTQ film professionals to work with.

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

RL: I love pretty much everything by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing. I’ve followed their work and been inspired by it since I was first learning to make films. I love the way they tell nuanced, intimate, stories with great characters and narrative drive, as well as delicacy around sensitive topics. I also love that their work is grounded in observational style, with incredible attention to poetic details of photography, soundscape, and music.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how? 

RL: I managed to make most of “To the End” during the pandemic, so I have managed to stay creative! 2021 was a really intense year for me, with a ton of travel for shoots for this film, as well as a very compressed editing timeline.

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make it more inclusive?

I think we need a National Film Board, like many other countries have, to fund and support projects and artists that do not necessarily fit into the specs of what the market is looking for at any given time. I think the huge companies that dominate film distribution should be legally required to devote certain percentages of their resources to funding independent films and filmmakers from underrepresented communities, a system similar to the requirements certain European countries have that major streamers support locally made content there.

I think we need a national healthcare system, free public universities, family leave, increased labor protections for freelancers, and other social democratic reforms to make our society more equitable so that people from all backgrounds and walks of life can take the risks associated with becoming a filmmaker.