Don’t call filmmaker Ryan White an activist; he just wants to hold powerful people accountable
By: Eric Langberg
Tags: True Crime, Documentary, Film, Filmmaking, Interview

EL: A lot of what I write about is our “prestige” true-crime bubble that we’re in, and how we love miscarriage-of-justice stories. So, in approaching a justice system that, in and of itself, to our Western eyes, seems like injustice on its face, how did you approach picking apart the cultural implications of what justice looks like here vs. there?

RW: I feel like this question comes up in so many of my films. I feel like we’re constantly debating in the edit room: what is “justice” in this story? We ask that question a million times. All of these stories are so complicated, in that that’s not a simple black-or-white answer, but in this one especially, justice was never going to be achieved. From the moment Kim Jong Nam was assassinated: the North Korean operatives got away with it. The North Korean regime got away with it. They literally leave the country as he’s dying, back to their country, which is impenetrable. They’re never going to be brought to any traditional form of justice. So that definition of justice was off the table the moment Kim Jong Nam died, unfortunately for him and his family.

So then the question became: what are degrees of justice that we can convey in our film? If these women are acquitted, that’s also not justice for Kim Jong Nam and his family, because then nobody is held accountable, but we started to realize… I can’t say this for certain, but it seemed like that warped sense for a need for justice is was what was guiding the Malaysian government to convict these women.

EL: Very good point.

RW: ‘The idea that North Korea got away with it, and this happened on our soil to a very public political figure… we cannot let everyone get away with it.’ It felt as if these women were sacrificial lambs in some way for the appearance of justice, which ironically, I think, would be the least amount of justice in the end, if that’s the way it had unfolded.

Culturally, I don’t think it was that different than telling an American story. The North Korean regime is its own thing, and they’re different, but when this was all going down geopolitically, with the Malaysian government, and the Indonesian government, and the Vietnamese government, it didn’t feel that other. That felt very similar to how these stories could unfold here. What was scarier was the idea that the case was so stacked against them that it felt like…

The truth did not come out in that courtroom. The truth was so one-sided in that courtroom, that the only opportunity for the truth to come out was through journalism or documentary storytelling. That’s why, thank god, the lawyers participated with us, and just completely opened up their cases to us, saying, “Here’s everything; put it out into the world because our government is stifling it.”

EL: So there’s also justice, then, for Siti and Doan, in having their story told through the film.

RW: Maybe! They would have to answer that. I feel like, those women have lost so much through this process… I would never pat myself on the back and say, “Thank God I helped get their truth out there!” because the sad reality is, they lost so much, and I don’t know if they’ll ever recover. I’m glad they participated [in the film] as well, and I hope people watch this film and realize that there is a world where they are telling the truth.

It’s still a sad ending for them, all-around, that their lives have been so detoured by this experience.

Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong are led out of the courthouse during the trial.

EL: It’s interesting that you say that… so do you view your documentary project, so to speak, as “activism” in any way? The Keepers I think felt a little like that to me, in getting this story told and out there in a way that would have been lost to history.

RW: I definitely wouldn’t use the world “activism.” I always say no to issue-based films; my company gets offered a lot of them. But, if there’s someone at the center that I’m fascinated with, or stimulated by, or if I’m hungry to know how they ended up there… then that’s what draws me.

For The Keepers, that was never going to be a Netflix series when it began. That was a family story, and it was about me meeting one woman who was Jane Doe, who was at the center of that whole story, and being so compelled by her and her circumstances, that I wanted to make something about her. It was the same about these two women [in Assassins] in essence; I was so compelled by who they were, which was always the guiding star of making this film.

Inevitably what happens is: you can’t tell these micro-stories of these women without looking at the macro, at the web that surrounds them, and then you end up at that world of… systemic, institutional, failings… But that’s never my intent. It always snowballs into that, because you can’t ignore that. It’s also not even my interest… I will battle as long as I can in the edit room not doing the big-picture, systemic parts, until my editor tells me I’m ruining everything if I turn a blind eye to these things.

The Keepers was a really interesting experience, because it more-so than anything I’ve made became a series that led to massive impact and change, but that was never my goal.

What guides me, definitely with Assassins, is anger. When you’re so deep in these stories, you start getting so angry about how people have been treated by the system. Then, I’m like a dog with a bone, wanting to make sure The Powers That Be don’t get away with it the way they have. I like The Powers That Be having to face the truth. So, if that’s activism, then maybe I am an activist.

(This interview has been condensed for space and lightly edited for clarity).