Director Davis Guggenheim chose the personal over politics

Director Davis Guggenheim poses in a Toronto hotel room as he promotes He Named Me Malala during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Chris Young / The Canadian Press via AP

American filmmaker Davis Guggenheim has to his name three heralded documentaries: Waiting for Superman, about failures in the public school system in America; It Might Get Loud, which analyses rock guitarists Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge; and An Inconvenient Truth, in which former vice-president Al Gore discusses climate change and how it will cause dramatic changes to the world.

So it comes as no surprise that Guggenheim was the name on the lips of producers Laurie MacDonald and Walter F Parkes when they were discussing who would be the ideal candidate to make a film about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban because of her prominent campaigns demanding the right for girls throughout the world to have an education. She lived to tell her story, and her family moved to Birmingham, England. Last year, at the age of 17, she received the Nobel Peace Prize.

“The very first filmmaker we thought about approaching when we decided to make it as a documentary was Davis Guggenheim, because of his gifts as a filmmaker and equally because of his great, long passion for education,” says MacDonald.

Guggenheim, 51, was born in St Louis, Missouri. He first rose to prominence through his work on television, including a stint as producer and director on the popular HBO drama Deadwood. However, it was his documentaries that brought him critical acclaim and awards.

An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar in 2007 and, in 2010, he received the Audience Award for best documentary at the Sundance Film Festival for Waiting for Superman.

He has also worked with the US president, Barack Obama, on his campaign videos.

So it’s hard to imagine him being intimidated by anyone. Yet Guggenheim admits he had some trepidation when he first went to see Malala and her family in Birmingham.

"I turned up at their house and rang their doorbell, not knowing what might happen," he said before his visit to Abu Dhabi last week for a premiere screening of He Named Me Malala. "I didn't know who I was going to meet – what was this Pakistani family like? I'm a guy from Los Angeles."

The director arrived not with a camera, but a voice recorder, and began asking questions, all the while wondering what the story would be and how he was going to tell it.

“When the producers first called me, my first instinct was to think about the geopolitical story and everything,” he states.

That changed upon meeting the family. “What struck me was the bond between father and daughter. What is so beautiful about it is that it’s a personal story that also manages to be so universal.”

The film he ended up making was about how Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala’s father, founded schools in Pakistan and promoted education. Ziauddin suggested to his daughter that she write an anonymous blog for the BBC about education under the Taliban, and his ideas became her actions as she became an increasingly prominent education-rights advocate.

“Immediately Image Nation Abu Dhabi came on board and then Participant Media,” explains Guggenheim. “It was this very diverse group of people making a very important story.”

Guggenheim sees the documentary as being more than a movie.

"The thing that is still a question is, what is the impact that this movie will have? I was part of An Inconvenient Truth, a movie that millions of people saw, and it became a movement," he says. "With He Named Me Malala, the first part of this process is done: we have made a movie, now we have to turn this into a movement because it's not enough that we tell the story – we have to change it into action. Malala will say this better than me, but I will say it anyway: 'There are 65 million girls around the world who need schooling.'"