Pailin Wedel
Pailin is a filmmaker, a journalist, and the founder of 2050 Productions. She’s a storyteller who has “always been frustrated with depictions of people from Southeast Asia in Western media”. Her latest documentary, Hope Frozen (available now on Netflix), deals with the complexity of a deeply religious Thai family who places all their faith in technology in hopes to bringing their young daughter back one day. I watched the documentary on my own (I don’t recommend that— definitely would have helped to have had a shoulder to cry on there with me while watching) and I was brought deeply into the psyche of this family’s journey and struggle with faith, science, trauma, and the media. Their story will move you.
Learn about how Pailin became a documentary filmmaker, the process of making Hope Frozen, and the kinds of stories she hopes to see more of and make more of.
How do you identify yourself as an artist?
That’s really interesting because the word artist is new to me. I guess being a documentary film director is being an artist! But I start from such a journalistic background that this film (Hope Frozen), which is a creative, character-driven documentary is my first very big foray into something that is much more creative than journalistic.
So I would say I’m a storyteller that comes from the perspective of someone who grew up in developing countries, who is a woman, and has always been frustrated with depictions of people from Southeast Asia in Western media. And it goes beyond depicting Asian Americans— when’s the last time you saw a film that depicts a Thai scientist? People know Thailand for the red light district, they know it for human trafficking, they know it for the beautiful beaches, but people don’t really know what normal, regular Thai people are like. I think a lot of those stories end up “othering” us. When people only see stories about political turmoil or human trafficking or the red light district here, they say, “well those are things that happen there, they’re not things that happen here.”
As a journalist I was definitely highlighting those stories as well, and those stories are really important to tell and I will continue to tell them. Because anything that happens that requires justice or needs light to be shed on them should always have attention. But I wanted to do something different this time, I wanted to portray something that no one’s ever seen from Thailand, futuristic ideas that emanate from silicon valley that have landed in Thailand. People here think about the possibilities of the future and have faith in technology. There’s more common ground between people than you may think.
What made you want to venture into documentary filmmaking after starting as a journalist?
There’s a lot of debate about: how much do documentary and journalism overlap? Because we’re both dealing with reality and facts. I think where journalism has constricted me is for one the time limit on it, but also it emphasizes informing people—which is good—but informing people in a dispassionate way whereas documentary is really, truly about focusing on emotional truth and it emphasizes understanding, to-the-core-of-someone’s-being-understanding, rather than facts and information. I was really hungry to get people outside and within Thailand to understand a family that might be very different from them.
Could you share your journey? How did you get where you are today and did you ever think your career would take you down this path?
Right off the bat, I never thought I would be here at all. Everything that has happened, looking back, might seem like a natural progression in some ways but at the time as I was experiencing them, everything feels accidental. And unplanned.
Listen to the rest of Pailin’s response below:
Let’s talk about Hope Frozen. How did you find this family and what started this process for you?
So I have to credit my husband who is also a journalist, he's from North Carolina. He saw their story— their story actually went viral here in Thailand because the little girl is the youngest girl in the world to be cryogenically frozen. He was like “Hey! You want to come along with me to interview the parents?” And I thought hmmm, not quite my story. I just worried that the parents were exploited or that we’re going to end up having this awkward conversation of: you know it’s not going to happen right? But I went, cause he was worried that his Thai was not going to be enough to translate a lot of the technical terms that might come up. So I went to help him out and what was supposed to be a 20-minute conversation ended up being hours. The parents both hold PhDs in science and in engineering, and they were extremely thoughtful and philosophical about their decision. And they’re devout Buddhists, so I was really curious to know more and more and more, and we ended up spending 2 and a half years trying to film and figure them out. Immediately my mind was changed when I went, they were very thoughtful people who knew exactly what they were doing so more questions came up about faith and science, faith and religion. It became a much more philosophical film where the start cryonic decision was kind of a starting point.
I’m curious about what you said before, about not wanting to exploit this family. Whenever I watch a documentary I always wonder about that: how do you capture the essence of a situation, of a family, fully and truthfully without feeling like you’re exploiting them? How do you walk that line?
I think, on some days when I have my very critical lens on I think all storytelling is exploitation.
That’s…true.
If you’re not telling your own story.
Right.
If you can get over that and you think that it’s important to the world to have this story out, in whatever way, that it creates understanding— I mean telling a story about a family with cryonics isn’t exposing human rights but I think it creates an understanding that is different.
I hope that people go home and talk about what their own beliefs are and reflect on it on a more personal level. And I think that’s what makes us human, to feel the connection with somebody through film and then go back and continue to think about it in other aspects of our own life. And a lot of people come up to me and have told me that. I often do a festival screening and the Q&A sometimes will be quiet at first because people are just like woah and absorbing everything. And then the Q&A will eventually start…but maybe about two weeks after that I often get emails! Of people saying “I have been thinking about this film so much for the past two weeks, I have so many more questions, what happened here, what about the family, can I show the film in my classroom” and it’s a film that sticks to you. I think that’s what I think is worth the exploitation.
Image courtesy of Pailin Wedel.
But on the other hand, you want to minimize harm as much as you can. So what keeps me up at night doing this film is: how is the family going to be affected? They’ve already gone through the wringer with Thai media—who have accused them of trapping her soul among other things.
And to be honest there wasn’t anything that I didn’t tell. It’s more about telling it in a way that is empathetic rather than judgmental. And letting people decide for themselves. I’ve tried very, very hard to create a nonjudgmental film that creates understanding rather than a film that is patronizing.
So as long as you make films with empathy for your subjects no matter who they are, even if they’re evil, to treat them as human beings...I think that’s a good place to start. And present the story in a bare way without judgment. That, for this film, is what I was going for.
Has the family seen it and watched it?
Yeah. They’ve seen it several times.
The main protagonist starts off as her father, but actually the story carries on and the protagonist changes from her father to her big brother Matrix. Matrix has seen it several times, he’s gone to so many festivals with me. He’s like a rockstar now he’s got so many people following his instagram. The father has seen it a couple of times too. Actually, at the very first screening, and the Thai premiere, the family brought 30 relatives to see it. I was just...sweating. I couldn’t even sit down! I was standing in the back of the theatre pacing. I’m sure the experience was difficult to watch the biggest tragedy of their lives replay over again. It couldn’t have been pleasant. At the end I said, I asked them “Did I do okay?” and they said “It’s fine. Thank you for staying. All the other journalists came and they left but you stayed for years.” It took me five years to get to this point, and for that they’re grateful.
They didn’t ask for any changes, they didn’t complain about anything (that I know of….maybe they do it privately). So I’m very grateful that they have enough of an understanding of storytelling to know that the film is worthy of being out there.
I don’t know if I’d be able to watch it myself if I was in their position.
Well, let me tell you this. A lot of people have told me that because yes, it is a sad story on some level. But we’ve done a number of high school screenings and kids from 14 to 18 just love it. I did not think that was my demographic at all because it’s such a heavy film! We took Matrix to the San Diego Asian Film Festival, I flew him over for the festival because it’s a bunch of high school screenings. They chose this film to do the high school screenings and I was like “Really? Are you sure?” But the kids were shouting and screaming, they just loved it. And when Matrix came out at the end they were like woah! He might as well have been Tom Cruise.
I think for a younger generation his character is quite inspiring because he’s the person who goes on this journey and he’s a bit of a genius to think of technology that might bring her back. So really the story is focused much more on his journey than the cryonic part of it. It’s about a brother who loves his sister so much he wants to be the one to bring her back.
It’s quite heartfelt and sweet. In a way the cryonic thing is a hook but not the central driving force of the whole film. I promise it won’t be just crying from beginning to end, just a little bit of crying.
In your career what other stories are you hoping to tell?
I say this in my bio sometimes: that I tend to be attracted to stories that are about trauma, and faith, and identity and often the clash or integration of cultures between east and west. I think trauma and faith are intertwined. Those are the kind of stories that bring out a lot of big questions that I think everybody explores throughout their lives. You know, what is life, what is death, what is love, what’s the limit of love, where do we draw the line between life and death, how do we deal with grief, how do we deal with trauma?
Those are the kinds of documentaries that I think I’ll continue to want to make. Anything that forces people to examine these big questions.
Who and what inspires you?
“It’s a tough question. Cause...there’s not one person, some famous person that I really want to be like. Because there’s just not a Thai-American woman directing films out there. So it’s very tough to be like, yeah! I wanna be like that person. It’s so rare. There are women directors that I admire, but I don’t want to be like them. I think there are bits of their craft that make me go ooh. That’s interesting. I might borrow that one day, you know? But no one’s journey is ever gonna be like mine.
I come from such a different path that I think there’s no one to emulate. ”
We’ll wrap up with some fun speed round questions! What was the last thing you watched on your screen?
The Unwell series on Netflix.
What was the last book you read?
Educated. But to be honest what I’ve been reading a lot lately is my father’s book! Because he’s writing a novel right now and I’ve been proofreading it for him.
Wow that’s so cool!
Yeah! My parents together wrote the book and it’s loosely based on my mom’s ancestors and it’s based in Thailand about a hundred years ago. And that’s what I’ve been mostly reading so it’s been a while since I’ve read something personally. It’s fiction, it just got a great publisher and it’s gonna come out later this year.
Wow.
I know, it’s cute! They’re like 72 and my dad has been a journalist but he’s always wanted to write novels and at 72 finally both of them— dreams realized.
You’re never too old for dreams. Finally, if you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?
Oh, I should not only tell my younger self this, I should tell myself this now: remember to enjoy things!!
I have done so much and a lot of times I don’t remember because I haven’t sat with it properly. I’m just on to the next thing and I’m constantly riddled with anxiety about the next project. As soon as I’m done with one I— I always joke with my friends and tell them “really all of this is for about ten minutes of happiness.” It comes in two five minute slots.
listen to the rest of Pailin’s response here:
