The story of Jack Bryan smacks like fiction. He’s an oddball rich kid, the vulnerable, good-looking scion of a well-connected Manhattan family, who got thrust into radically different circumstances when he used the powers at his disposal—filmmaking and access to friends-and-family financing—to realize the solemn words his father once said to him: “You are going to have advantages, and that means two things: you won’t have any excuses, and you will also have a responsibility to be of service.”

Bryan wrote his first film when he was 16—a fictional piece involving a kidnapping—and took classes at the New York Film Academy. His schooling included stops at Buckley School and the Kent boarding school in Connecticut, from which he dropped out before attending rehab (he said he had depression issues). He finished high school at Montana Academy, a self-described “therapeutic school.” After arriving home to New York to study media and film at the New School at the age of 23, Bryan made a documentary about the seedy, beloved Siberia Bar, landed a job at a production company, and directed two micro-budget indie dramas, one of which had a minor theatrical release in 2015. (The New York Times called it a “ mere genre exercise.”)

He was in pre-production on another small narrative film, this one a 24-hours-in-New-York-wild-ride drama, when he decided to pivot to Active Measures. The filmmaker moved to a friend’s house in Maryland—he called it “the bunker”—where he and Clements spent several weeks studying the evidence, scrawling their ideas on window glass and large sections of cardboard to help envision the web they were trying to connect. Also on the team was Laura DuBois, Bryan’s girlfriend and an experienced producer, whom Bryan calls “the boss of the movie.”

Bryan said that the thesis and main points of Active Measures haven’t changed much since they first sketched it out in the bunker—it’s just that their once apparently too-ludicrous-to-be-real collusion narrative has become more plausible. Audiences will see this in the film’s highlighted news clips and in-depth interviews with respected world leaders, think-tank wonks, former C.I.A. and State Department officials, academics, and Capitol Hill veterans, including Senator John McCain and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton—who provides insight into Putin’s psyche, including a wry aside about the Russian leader’s tendency to manspread.

After a second beer at Radegast, Bryan was off to his apartment to review post-production on the film. Eventually, more accomplished documentarians will have Trump stories to tell. (Michael Moore is currently wrangling a release for his own big Trump film, Fahrenheit 11/9, which is currently stalled because of the Weinstein Company’s implosion.) But for now, Bryan is happy to be in front of the pack. “Until the cavalry comes, people need to know what’s going on,” Bryan said, brushing away the hair falling on his forehead. “Until the pros show up, I’m what you’ve got.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that Donald Trump was an alum of Buckley School.