The Sundance Film Festival is known for unearthing new talent and premiering riveting documentaries. Ella Glendining's Is There Anybody Out There ticks both of those boxes. The British filmmaker's feature debut is a personal story centred on Glendining's rare disability and the journey she embarks on, in an attempt to find someone else like her. Whilst she has explored disability in her fictional short films, Glendining turns the spotlight onto herself. For the film's Sundance premiere, we sat down with Glendining to discuss the challenges of shooting and editing herself, how the narrative evolved amidst pandemics and pregnancies, and the impact the whole process has had on her.
Have you felt like you've been building towards telling this story after your string of short films?
I don't know if I do feel that I've always been building towards this particular project. I think it might seem that way because all my shorts have been quite personal. But yeah, this story was not always going to be so personal. I was always very interested in the experience of otherness, alienation, and feeling very different and feeling like something's missing. But it wasn't necessarily going to be so focused on my personal search. I was going to meet lots of other interesting disabled people but then I got pregnant, and it just sort of quickly became very personal.
You film a lot of yourself. Were there any particular challenges, whether that's to do with structure or just with the fact that you're editing yourself?
So, so many challenges. I did get used to seeing myself and hearing myself more quickly than I expected. I managed to see myself as a character. But definitely how personal to go was a challenge. It was never a horrible challenge, but lots of things happened that didn't make it into the film. There's loads of really beautiful scenes, for example, that I kind of was clinging on to a bit. Then my editor would say, “no, think about the story.” So that's a big lesson that I learned while making this film: every single shot has to tell this story. It has to be about ableism, whereas if I didn't have the people that I was collaborating with, it would have been much more of a montage film with lovely scenes.
Talking about the edit, a particular scene that stood out was between you and your friend, where you're both drinking and smoking. We see a more human, casual side. Was that always planned to be in the film? Or was that something found in the edit?
Yeah, I knew I wanted to include Naomi in the film because I think our conversation about our differing experiences of disability, having two very different disabilities, is a really interesting conversation. I've never really seen that in film before, and it's what we talk about all the time. Equally, what I really want is for this film to humanise disabled people. I think, like you said, seeing us sort of behaving badly is really refreshing and really humanising. There was a debate about whether we should include the drinking and the smoking like that, and there's a version of the film without me smoking and without me and Naomi drinking. It felt very serious. I've already, actually experienced some judgement for the smoking scene because I have a kid, which I didn't really expect. Just out of a few people that have seen it, people have said “Yeah, that's the one thing that bothered me about the film is that you're smoking.” But I maintain that it's important that I am smoking. Because even though of course that's not the role model that I want to be necessarily — the act is human, it's very human.
You really do go on this roller coaster journey throughout the documentary. Never mind being pregnant throughout it, COVID hits as well. You've already explained a little bit about the pregnancy, but how much of an impact did those two events have on the film?
The pregnancy had a massive impact but that's kind of self explanatory. COVID was obviously a bastard to everybody who was doing anything at the time, but I think it meant that I visited less places I really wanted to go. I had found an amazing man in India with my condition called Joby Matthew, who I interviewed really early on, but didn't make the film because the situation in India was so dire at the time with COVID. We couldn't travel there. I hope to meet him one day, but you know, everything was put on hold for a while. I carried on recording and loads of stuff happened in my personal life. But yes, it certainly meant that it took longer than I was expecting it to.
There's this really nice sense of community towards the end of the film, but was there anybody else like Joby who didn't make the cut for some reason?
Yeah, yeah, there was. There was one big one, actually, a woman. When I was young, very young, like five years old, my mom showed me a photo of a person just like me. She was a few years older than me and I'd had this photo in my mind for all these years, but my mum couldn't really remember where she got the photo from. I had no contact details from the child's parents or anything. In a sense, it was this person that I was trying to track down, it was this image I had in my head. Eventually, I did actually find her. I contacted her and it was all looking really good. I was gonna go and meet her. And then she changed her mind at the last moment. It was awful. I was so heartbroken. I was devastated. I thought that this film was gonna be all about me meeting her and that she was going to be my soulmate, and that it was always meant to be. But it was such a good lesson. She was never going to be my soulmate, she was never going to be exactly like me — which is what I wanted at that time.
With a mostly female and non-binary crew, do you think that affected production in any way?
It was really lovely, but it wasn't something that I was very set on. It kind of just evolved that way. I found my producer Janine and I think I did actually specify that I'd like a female cinematographer. Especially because I knew that I was going to end up filming the birth. Yeah, so it was really nice, it felt safe and comfortable. Like family, really. It was really funny when we were working closely creatively with a man, Erland Cooper, who's the composer. It was just bizarre because it had always been a group of girls. It changed the dynamic so much, even though he's amazing.
Touching on the birthing scene, it's such a magical, raw moment. What's it like to have that scene documented and be able to look back at that moment forever?
Yeah, it's really amazing. It's a wild thing to agree to have your birth filmed. In fact, it was my idea. And I insisted on it. It's really special, but it's also really odd because it's not how I remember it. Obviously it was much longer than the scene is. We're retelling a story, so we pieced it together and there's so much that you don't see. But the moment that River is put on my chest, and I cuddle him, that's how I felt. You see me falling in love, that's genuinely me falling in love. And I agree, it feels very raw and real that scene, doesn't it?
You hear a lot of these horror stories of not just mothers, but parents within the industry; when they're trying to work on a production and they're treated differently. Did you face any of those issues during this project? And if not, what do you think other productions need to do to be able to accommodate parents?
I didn't feel any of those pressures, I think because everyone that I was working with closely was also a mother. Janine, my producer, and Marie, the cinematographer, both have multiple children. It is true, though. I say in the film that I will never take River on another work trip again. And that is absolutely certain. I don't really know the answer for other productions. The answer is, I think, that people should get paid sufficient childcare costs. And there should be a more understanding work culture. But again, I've been really, really lucky with this film in that it wasn't a negative — it was actually a positive for me having a child, because it made the story better.
It seems to me there's this main thematic message that society itself needs to change to be able to accommodate for everyone, including the disabled communities. What kind of impact do you want this film to have on audiences?
I want people to come away less ableist. Obviously I'm talking mostly about non disabled people, a non disabled audience. I want this film to humanise disabled people, to get people to think about disability and accessibility and the way that society sees disabled people in a different way. And yeah, I want people to think about the nuances about the sort of conversations that we have in the film about surgery and all that stuff. I want it to be really thought provoking.
There's so many amazing pieces of archival footage but one thing I was really interested in was your dad's home videotapes of you. Did that ever influence your filmmaking endeavours and career path?
I don't remember my dad with a camera, but oh my god, there is hours and hours and hours and hours of footage. And he narrates it all! It's amazing. Definitely, my dad influenced me. He ran a wildlife filmmaking school. I love wildlife, but I'm not into it in the same way. I think having creative parents really influenced me. My mom was a singer as well — she was a waitress but singing was her passion. They were just both kind of black sheep, I guess, in a way. So that influenced me because they've been role models; crazy creatives doing whatever they want.
You've done fiction projects in the past, being short films, and now you have your feature debut under your belt. Is it going to be documentaries from now on, or are you going to focus on fiction?
I'm a bit sick of the documentary medium at the moment. Fiction is my biggest love because I love writing. So, my next big project is a historical drama about the life of a court dwarf in the 17th century. Same sort of themes. It's about ableism and him overcoming his own internalised ableism, whilst finding community. So I'm about to start writing the script for that. That's very much the complete opposite of this film. I'm really excited.
