In Mimi Wilcox’s Bad Hostage, the story of her grandmother being held hostage is merely the beginning. As she looks at other high-profile cases around the same time, she unravels connections about the treatment and public perception of the female victims when they weren’t the ones who actually committed any crimes.
Awards Buzz spoke with Wilcox and producer Max Asaf about how Wilcox was inspired by her own family history to dig deeper into something that ended up being quite surprising. When asked about the possibility of expanding this to a feature-length project, nonfiction or narrative:
“I think there’s definitely more story here. This is a short, and so I think particularly with the stories of Patricia Hearst and Kristin Enmark, there’s of course so much more to those stories, and so many details that we couldn’t include in this film. And so I hope that if people watch this film, they go out and learn more about those stories in a critical way, looking carefully about who’s talking about them, what they’re saying about it. I do think that there’s the potential for a narrative feature in my grandmother’s story as well. I think it’s such an amazing story that obviously worked at least very well for me as a kid growing up.”
Asaf echoed those sentiments:
“I think it’s just an incredible story. Michaela is just such a strong, incredible, charismatic, funny, warm person, and it comes across in the film. And yeah, when thinking about, like, a narrative feature, she’s an incredibly nuanced person and anchors our film in such an incredible way, and she anchored Mimi’s family in such an incredible way in this situation.”
Watch the video above to hear about their research process and how the film came together.
Bad Hostage is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Short.
