Directors of Oscar-Hopeful Amazon Doc ‘Wildcat’ Discuss Mental Health, Film’s Life-Changing Multi-Million Deal

In October 2021, amazon studios announced that it would acquire Trevor Beck Frost and Melissa Lesh’s “Wildcat” for a price close to $20 million, a staggering sum for a documentary of this type. Produced by 30WEST (“Tiger King,” “Flee”), the film tells the story of former British soldier Harry Turner and conservationist Samantha Wicker, who help each other heal while caring for a small ocelot bobcat deep in the Peruvian jungle. .

This is Frost and Lesh’s first feature film. Frost comes from a still photography background, with work published in National Geographic and the New York Times, while Lesh has previously worked with short films. The documentary has gained considerable momentum on the brink of awards season, having recently been nominated for two IDA Documentary Awards for editing (Lesh, Joshua Altman, David Zieff, Ben Gold) and music (Patrick Jonsson).

Amazon has already launched the film’s FYC page, which lists several categories, including best documentary film, direction, and original song for Fleet Foxes’ “A Sky Like I’ve Never Seen,” featuring Brazilian singer Tim Bernardes.

“Wildcat” was performed before a packed audience at IDFA‘s Best of Fests, which also includes other top titles from 2022 like Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes” and Kathryn Ferguson’s “Nothing Compares.” While at IDFA, Frost and Lesh sat down with Variety to talk about their collaboration, their time in Peru, and how “Wildcat” changed Harry and Samantha’s lives.

This is its first feature. Because right now?

Frost: Melissa had been in love with documentaries for as long as we’d known each other and was always trying to convince me that documentaries are the biggest thing happening in storytelling right now. So little by little I was coming to terms with Melissa and at the same time I was getting frustrated with still photography because magazines and newspapers are dying out and there’s very little collaboration. I accidentally met Harry and Samantha, our main characters, in a hotel lobby; They showed me a hard drive full of images of the cat and I immediately knew that there was a beautiful movie to be made.

Lesh: I’ve been making short films for about a decade, and you don’t really know what’s going to make a splash or challenge you in the biggest way. I had a mentor who said, ‘It’s not valuable because what you’re doing right now is developing your skill set and when the story lands, you’ll be ready,’ and I feel like that’s what’s been happening to me for the last decade. When history found us, I felt that we were ready to receive it.

There are quite a few raw and delicate scenes of emotional turmoil in ‘Wildcat’. How did you navigate the ethics of what to shoot and what to ultimately share on film?

Frost: We lived on a very small wooden platform, just the four of us. We would bathe together, we would cook together, we would sleep together and what happened is that we quickly became a family and because we were a family, filming became second nature. When you watch someone’s home videos, there’s a lot of intimacy in them, because families let their guard down with each other. It’s outsiders that make you raise your guard. Also, we had no distractions, no cell phones, no internet; all we had was each other, so we had a lot of opportunities to talk and that lent itself to an intimacy where we were able to get permission from both of us to film some of these most difficult moments.

Lesh: People have asked us several times if we thought our presence and our cameras were potentially dangerous to the situation and our answer was no. In fact, we feel that the camera creates a certain aura of responsibility. One of the main things to help people with mental health problems is to be present, right? So our very presence and being there with a camera meant that Harry felt a certain responsibility towards us.

How long were you in Peru with Harry and Samantha?

Frost: I did 180 days and Melissa did about 160 days.

You mentioned how strong the relationship between you and the subjects became. Why the creative choice to withdraw from the film?

Frost: We filmed our calls with them, I filmed myself on several occasions just talking to Harry and explaining that I cared about him and that I was worried about him. We tried to incorporate that into the film, we experimented with it and ultimately it never felt right so we ended up cutting it out.

Did you consult any mental health experts in order to deal with Harry’s crisis?

Frost: I have had depression and anxiety for a decade and have been seeing both a psychologist and a psychiatrist. I also have several friends who work in the mental health field, one of whom is a very knowledgeable mental health reporter. So I was able to consult not only with my own doctors, but also with some of these other people.

Lesh: We also have a complete list of mental health counselors.

Frost: They arrived in the editing phase.

Lesh: It was very important to show the hacks to experts in the field because the last thing we want to do is trigger someone or cause more damage to someone who is fighting. There were critical points of feedback, we learned and we adapted and we made sure to cut certain things out so the film didn’t cause damage.

The film has been acquired by Amazon in an unprecedented multi-million dollar deal and is already speculated to be a key contender during awards season. How does it feel?

Lesh: Oppressive [laughs]. We would never expect to be here. The probability of what happened with our movie is so low that it’s not something you can trust. We didn’t go into this film thinking that this was going to be the outcome, and in a way, there’s something really beautiful about it because we worked with Harry and Samantha in such a deeply collaborative and somewhat naive way and now we have to share it with the world.

Frost: Seems like it was all worth it, you know? Harry and Sam took a chance on us, they had other people approaching them over the footage. What makes us most proud is that we share it equally with Harry and Samantha as producers and as producers they get shares. Samantha worked for seven years and was never paid. The most money Harry ever made was $13,000 in the military. Now, thanks to this deal, they are both set for life, both can dedicate themselves fully to their conservation work.

Are you already thinking about what’s next?

Lesh: Yes, we are starting our next movie! I won’t say much about it, but it’s a similar type of human/animal story. As with ‘Wildcat’, one of our goals is to create a fairly clear driving narrative, but touch on themes that are much deeper. We’re really excited about the intersection of nature and humans, so we aim to attract people who might not care about wildlife otherwise.

Frost: There are very few films about the human relationship with nature, so we see an opportunity and want to spend the majority of our career telling stories in an effort to improve how conservation storytelling actually impacts what happens in some of these places around the world. world.

“Wildcat” opens in a limited theatrical release on December 21. It hits Prime Video on December 30.