How can we free ourselves from fear and social barriers to live more fulfilling and meaningful lives? What does it take to overcome trauma and turn it into triumph, and failure into reinvention? How can we shine a light on the marginalized and misunderstood to create social change that transforms the lives of women?
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is an Oscar and Emmy award-winning Canadian-Pakistani filmmaker whose work highlights extraordinary women and their stories. She earned her first Academy Award in 2012 for her documentary Saving Face, about the Pakistani women targeted by brutal acid attacks. Today, Obaid-Chinoy is the first female film director to have won two Oscars by the age of 37. In 2023, it was announced that Obaid-Chinoy will direct the next Star Wars film starring Daisy Ridley. Her most recent project, co-directed alongside Trish Dalton, is the new documentary Diane von Fürstenberg: Woman in Charge, about the trailblazing Belgian fashion designer who invented the wrap dress 50 years ago. The film had its world premiere as the opening night selection at the 2024 Tribeca Festival on June 5th and premiered on June 25th on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally. A product of Obaid-Chinoy's incredibly talented female filmmaking team, Woman in Charge provides an intimate look into Diane von Fürstenberg’s life and accomplishments and chronicles the trajectory of her signature dress from an innovative fashion statement to a powerful symbol of feminism. Her other notable projects include A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, Transgenders: Pakistan’s Open Secret, and the television miniseries Ms. Marvel.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
You tell the story of Diane von Fürstenberg: Woman in Charge, and it's truly fascinating because it's not just one story but many. It encompasses 50 years since the creation of the wrap dress. It’s the story of Diane, but it’s also her mother’s history as a Holocaust survivor and how she instilled in Diane resilience, imagination, and drive. You tell so many layered interesting stories, 1950s and 60s in Europe, 1970s in America in the era of sexual freedom and the hedonistic New York scene. It's the story of a businesswoman, a princess, a marriage, reinvention, and a dress that became a symbol of women's empowerment and liberation. In the way that Diane Von Furstenberg created a timeless dress that became a symbol of freedom for women worldwide, you present us with the beautiful life of a single working mother, allowing us to see ourselves in her vulnerabilities and struggles, inspiring us to chart our own path and find our voice on the journey to becoming women in charge. With all these intricate stories, how did you find your way into her story?
SHARMEEN OBAID-CHINOY
As a filmmaker, I've always made films about extraordinary women whose lives are faced with extenuating circumstances who've had adversity thrown at them and who've risen to the occasion. And when I began to look at Diane's story, for me, Diane is a fashion designer, but she's so much more. Her central ethos is woman before fashion, and we felt it was very important to take that ethos and weave it into the spine of our film, and make it about the woman.
The Making of Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge
From the first time we sat down with Diane, she's such a natural storyteller that she began at her birth, which was a triumph because her mother had come out of Auschwitz only 18 months before she was born. As we began to tell Diane's story, we realized that it was so intrinsically linked with the history, politics, culture of the world, whether it was Europe in the 1950s and 60s, or America in the 70s and 80s. We felt that while we were telling Diane's story, we also wanted to tell the bigger story of what was happening in the world at that time. And so you see that when you watch the film, there are many layers, whether it's graphics, or music, or archival footage, or photographs that we’ve used. Together, they weave a story of what it was like to live at that time. And that is a very conscious decision that Trish Dalton, my co-director, and I made when we were designing the film.
Towards the end of our filming, Diane took us on a walk, and as we walked through the woods, we ended up at a flat ground that had a stone wall around it. And Diane looked at me and said, “This is my resting place.” We knew that in telling Dan's story, we had a beginning, middle, and end, and that had been clearly defined by Diane herself. And that was the natural arc of the film that we chose to tell.
Once Diane was ready to tell her story, we spent a lot of time talking with the camera off, and spending time with her, traveling with her, having meals with her and really peeling the onion to get to the heart of Diane. At its core, it is also a film about four generations of women. It's about Diane's mother, it's about Diane, it's about Diane's daughter, and her granddaughter. We wanted all those voices in the film, and her family was incredible in that they allowed us into the inner sanctum of their lives.
Trish and I were really spoiled for choice because Diane has, unlike so many other people, documented every single minute of her life. In the basement of her house, there is a long room that has all her diaries, photographs, videos, mementos, letters from her children, and scrapbooks. And so when we began telling this story, we really went deep into her personal archives. That is why the film is so rich; that is why you see Diane when she's two, three, four years old, you hear from her mother. That is why, as Diane goes on a journey from Europe to America, you go through her scrapbooks and you see her own personal journey and her children's journey.
And I think in making this film, every single person who we called whose voice we wanted to include wanted to contribute. They wanted to say something about Diane, because she had left such a mark on their lives. Our producers’ jobs, Tracy and Fabiola, was to juggle those schedules. How do you juggle the schedule of secretary Hillary Clinton with Oprah Winfrey? How do you make sure that Anderson Cooper and Mark Jacobs, you know, in the filming time that we had, that we could put all of these people together? But Diane's friendships run deep with people, and people made sure to make time.
You know, she was a single mother, and I think that young single mothers watching this film will feel for Diane, especially single mothers who are trying to be entrepreneurs, and creating businesses, and trying to find their way into the world to be able to raise a family. To do that as an immigrant in a new country is challenging, and Diane shows you just how challenging it is. In making choices about living her life, in being with her children or expanding her business, there were sacrifices that were made, and those sacrifices are boldly put on the screen for viewers to watch.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
You've told the stories of marginalized communities in Pakistan and women who have risen above their personal circumstances to highlight issues such as honor killings and acid attacks, or challenging stories in war zones, like children of the Taliban. As a storyteller, you’ve been at the front lines of trauma and injustice, and during this process, you've been threatened and harassed at times. How do you overcome your own fears and find the courage to ask those important questions and tell these important stories that are not often told?
OBAID-CHINOY
When I was young, I think empathy and the fact that I wanted to create characters, or tell the stories of people who had been on hero's journeys and who had been faced with extraordinary circumstances - that is something that has always driven me. The spine of the body of my work has been about the hero's journeys. And sometimes, when you are telling stories, and holding up a mirror, there are reverberations that take place. And I think that for me, the question is if I am bringing to screen the stories of people who will inspire others, move others to think about other people in a different light. If I feel like I've been able to do that, then I think the price to pay to tell those stories is worth it.
I realized very young and very early on in my career that film does more than just inform and inspire and entertain. It can move people into action, whether it's personal or collective action. The first time I realized that was in 2006, when I did a film in the Philippines, which was about women who did not have access to contraceptives and were being forced into a life of constant pregnancies. The organization that I was profiling as part of that film used the film to lobby the local government to rethink its decisions. Suddenly, my film went from just being a film to something bigger than that. And that's when I realized that there could be certain films that I create that could impact the lives of other people.
In 2015, with A Girl in the River, I created a film that was about a young girl who had been shot by her father and her uncle because she had decided to get married on her own free will. They left her to die in a gunny sack in the river, and she survived. Sabah's story was deeply inspiring, because she wanted to send her father and uncle to jail, but in the end, she forgave them using a lacuna in the law. And when it was nominated for an Academy Award, we wrote a letter to the prime minister of Pakistan, and we used the film to educate and inform the government about the impact of the lacuna in that law, and how it was being misused. The film played a role in closing that and changing the law, which ensured that men who killed women in the name of honor would go to prison.
As a filmmaker, when I go into a project, I go in with a very open mind, because I'm there to learn and to understand the protagonist and their struggles. But as we're filming, we begin to piece together what the story is, what is the start of the story, what moves them, what are the pivotal moments in their life, and I think that we begin to put the building blocks off that. And then, towards the end of the filming, that's when we really realize what the arc of the story is. Oftentimes, it's not the arc that we originally envisioned it was going to be. As a filmmaker, I like to be surprised. I like to think that what I came into the film with has changed, because that's the real “aha moment” when you're a filmmaker.
On Embracing Technology and the Future Impact of AI on Film
I think it's very early for us to see how AI is going to impact us all, especially documentary filmmakers. And so I embrace technology, and I encourage everyone as filmmakers to do so. We're looking at how AI is facilitating filmmakers to tell stories, create more visual worlds. I think that right now we're in the play phase of AI, where there's a lot of new tools and you're playing in a sandbox with them to see how they will develop.
I don't think that AI has developed to the extent that it is in some way dramatically changing the film industry as we speak, but in the next two years, it will. We have yet to see how it will. As someone who creates films, I always experiment, and then I see what it is that I'd like to take from that technology as I move forward.
Reflections on Climate Change and Connecting with Mother Nature
My production company SOC Films, which works out of Pakistan, has created more than 15 short films about climate change in the region, and created a book for children to talk about climate change heroes. Pakistan is one of the top 10 countries in the world most affected by climate change. And so at the heart of everything that I do, climate change matters greatly to me because I have a personal connection to it.
I love to hike and I seek out mountains and quiet places where one can be in solitude with nature. I think that in the desire to expand and consume, we have really shaken the core of that connection that we have with Mother Earth — and I think that it's important. It's incumbent upon us to make sure that our children's generation and their children's generation have that same connection, where they can be in parts of the world where Mother Nature has been left to be in the state that it's meant to be in.
