Higher Ground Boss Says Company Founders Aren’t Immune to Industry Challenges: “It Doesn’t Matter if the Obamas Are Behind Your Project”
Vinnie Malhotra, the president of Higher Ground, the film, TV and new media production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, offered some insight into what it’s like to navigate Hollywood amid widespread industry consolidation and cutbacks. Turns out having projects endorsed by the former President and First Lady doesn’t immediately translate to a greenlight from the powers that be at studios or streamers.
“We are not immune to the same challenges that so many companies like ours, so many filmmakers, so many storytellers, find themselves. It is a challenging business, and it doesn’t matter if the Obamas are behind your project,” Malhotra said this week while sitting on a panel of documentary industry insiders during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. “We get a lot of passes, we get a lot of nos. We don’t have a magic bullet that gets our projects made. More and more, [it is] about us trying to get a little bit farther out of that system and trying to get, as we’ve tried over the last two years, to a place where we can utilize this company with the founders [and] figure out how to help bring to life different films and stories.”
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Mounting any type of project during a climate of “tremendous fear” is a challenge that peers must continue to grapple with, Malhotra added. “It is a daily battle…trying to convince people,” he said, adding that storytellers must remain nimble especially when it comes to the format. “How you present stories is important, and I think that you cannot be locked into, ‘It’s going to be my way or no way.’ Just like they cannot be locked into, ‘It’s my way or no way.’ We have to find common ground there. Sometimes it’s a documentary, sometimes it’s a scripted project or sometimes it’s a podcast. We’re constantly trying to figure out the means to tell that story.”
The panel, held at the Impact Lounge in Park City’s Prospector Square, was presented and hosted by Firelight Media in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation. Titled “State of the Union: Documentary Industry Leaders on What Comes Next,” the conversation featured Malhotra alongside fellow panelists Marcia Smith, filmmaker and co-founder of Firelight Media, Geeta Gandbhir, director of Sundance selection The Perfect Neighbor, and Carrie Lozano, president and CEO of ITVS.
Much of the discussion focused on what those in the nonfiction space can and should be doing now after the documentary bubble burst and as purse strings have been tightened all over town. Add to that an uncertain political, social and cultural landscape, and the result is something close to an industry crisis. Moderator Cristina Ibarra, a documentary filmmaker and 2021 MacArthur fellow, acknowledged the current climate by calling it “a very chaotic time” just days into the new administration of President Donald Trump. “I came here [to Sundance] from El Paso, Texas where my beloved borderland is under attack, specifically, right now,” she said in opening the conversation. “I’m thinking about my uncle who is fighting his deportation as we speak.”
Ibarra noted how rights for women and members of the LGBTQ community are under attack while threats are also being unleashed at public media institutions from the Republican party. Ibarra asked, “It’s a really difficult, challenging moment for democracy itself, so what can we do as documentarians? What can the form of documentary do at this moment to respond to these challenges?”
Those questions provided the throughline for the nearly one-hour conversation. Marcia took the first stab at finding an answer. “Times are difficult now in the field,” she said, adding that filmmakers of color are some of the first to feel the sting. “People aren’t getting the budget they have been used to getting. … And it’s tough for everybody. It’s not like these are great fat times for anyone, but a very small number of filmmakers. Yet, what the country is facing is so much bigger than that.”
While the instinct of those in the field may be to retract and “protect ourselves,” Smith said documentarians must instead be bold. “It is essentially our responsibility to tell the stories that people need to hear at this time, [stories] that may be harder to tell, but that is really what our job is,” she added. “I do think there’s a premium on collaboration on talking across fields, so we can’t stay in our own documentary bubble. We’re going to have to talk across communities and build a lot of solidarity and figure out how we defend people on many different fields.”
Lozano echoed that sentiment and said that despite the threats — “there’s always threats, we know this” — she leans on optimism. “I’m not in a mindset of shrinking, I’m in an expansive [mindset]. I want to do more. I just invite all of you to be part of that conversation and that ideation. I want to do more. I also want to hear from folks who don’t like what we do and to try to talk that through. I want to be at that table and I want this storytelling for people to be seen in all kinds of communities and to see themselves.”
For her part, Gandbhir pointed out a fact about this year’s Oscar race that she said reflects the challenges in the documentary space in the most obvious way. No Other Land, a nonfiction film from Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal snagged a best documentary feature nomination but it does not have distribution. “Why doesn’t that film have distribution? I think we can all reflect on it, but it’s…certain voices that are already marginalized are being even further marginalized. With [diversity, equity and inclusion programs] being dismantled, public media needs to really just uphold its mandate and do what it’s supposed to do.”
Malhotra was then asked about how Higher Ground navigates the DEI conversation, something that has become an explosive conversation in January as President Trump and his administration have taken office and sought to dismantle or at least attack the programs on a daily basis.
“I would say at our company, Higher Ground, we probably describe ourselves as a values-based company rather than a mission-based company. I think that those values are obviously reflective of the founders of the company. At the core of that is diversity, and diversity in all of its different facets. It’s not just who’s making a film, but what stories are being told and how are you telling them?”
Malhotra then cited some notable and highly recognized Higher Ground like the documentary Crip Camp and the narrative feature Rustin as examples of storytelling diversity.
“A big part of what we’re trying to do at Higher Ground is [thinking about] how do we reach communities? How do we reach audiences? How do we reach people that maybe are not in agreement with everything that we believe or what our value system is, and how do you draw them in?” explained Malhotra. “Is that a documentary? And then what kind of a documentary is it? Is it observation? Is it verite? Is it a reportage? How do you go about that? But also, do you reach people through comedy? Do you reach people through a dramatic interpretation?”
Higher Ground has been answering those questions in a wide array of projects like Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali-starrer Leave the World Behind, the NBA docuseries Starting 5, the animated series Waffles + Mochi and even the Netflix reality series for older romantics Later Daters. But one of their projects, a docuseries called Working: What We Do All Day, got a special mention from Malhotra.
“I grew up in an immigrant Indian household, and I saw very firsthand the racism of people trying to shame my parents and my family,” he recalled, adding that he was pleased Higher Ground was involved with presenting Working as it unveiled a personal look at families. “We were able to look at all the different immigrants that are working within institutions — whether it was tech or hotels at different levels from the CEO to the housekeeper — as a way to show that there isn’t a monolithic view of immigrants in this country. And you can see the deep, deep contribution that has been made over generations and decades. And I think it’s important for us to also highlight the commonality and to show, to find where are there bridges that we can come back. We’ve become such a polarized culture.”
Smith got the last word by saying that despite her “worrying,” she has faith in the younger generation and her peers new to the field to innovate and be the change to sustain the documentary space. “I think in this next period, there’s going to be a premium on experimentation, on community-based models that don’t rely on big distributors,” she said. “It’s actually a challenge for the institutions, for festivals, for organizations like Firelight, for funders to be listening hard enough and looking hard enough for where the innovation is coming from — because it’s going to jump.” Only time will tell in which direction.
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