'The Eagle Huntress': What You Can Expect After Sundance

When No Film School's Liz Nord saw 'The Eagle Huntress' at TIFF this year, she wrote that she may have seen the perfect documentary. It’s got all the elements: incredibly charismatic protagonists, majestic landscapes, underlying social issues, and a classic David and Goliath tale. In this case our "David" is actually a 13-year-old girl named Aisholpan who is determined to learn the dangerous art of hunting game with eagles in the frozen wilderness—and the "Goliath" is the 12-generation-long eagle-hunting tradition that has never, ever allowed a female to participate. Fortunately, Aisholpan's father—a champion eagle hunter himself— agrees to train her, despite objections of the community elders. The story behind the film is almost as dramatic as its subject.  Otto Bell's small crew underwent Herculean production efforts to shoot the sweeping film in the mountains of Mongolia. On this podcast, Mr. Bell is joined by producer Stacey Reiss, who came on to shepherd the project to completion when Bell had run entirely out of resources.  They discuss the film's year of post-production and distribution adventures, from running a team of post-production translators in Kazhakstan, to getting EP Daisy Ridley on board just shy of their Sundance premiere, to the workload any filmmaker can expect to take on after your film is in the can.

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