Last screened as an excerpt at the Walker’s 2016 Cinema of Urgency Local Voices program, Norah Shapiro’s dramatic feature-length documentary Time for Ilhan follows what turns out to be an ever-evolving story about a historic subject, the unexpected win by Ilhan Omar, now a representative in the Minnesota House and the first Somali-American legislator in the United States. In advance of the film’s Twin Cities premiere, Shapiro met at Minneapolis’s Safari Restaurant with writer Safy-Hallan Farah (Rolling Stone, Vice, Elle, Vogue, New York Times) about why and how Time for Ilhan got made, the power of independent voice, access, and the choices Shapiro made along the way.

Safy-Hallan Farah (SHF)

How did Time for Ilhan come to be?

Norah Shapiro (NS)

I had been thinking about the Somali community in the Twin Cities. I was really fascinated with what felt to me like building tensions, both in Minnesota but also far beyond in the country, in terms of Islamophobia, feminism, questions of what people look like outside and what that means, and continuing themes that I had been exploring in my film Miss Tibet: Beauty in Exile. Also, as you know, I used to be a trial attorney in my previous life, and I haven’t done a film yet set in the world in criminal justice. I find myself drawn to extremism cases that were cooking around at that time. And I had a friend who was representing one of the young men who was being charged [in 2016, three Twin Cities–based Somali men were found guilty of plotting to join ISIS and commit murder overseas]. I knew the US Attorney. I was watching what was happening there, all the tensions, and I was interested in thinking about a possible story that I might follow, potentially from the perspective of women and mothers. As I was exploring that, I went to talk to a friend I’d known for years and who had been on a board with me and had seen and liked my work. Basically, she said, “Great idea, but no way. What you’re talking about doing is too hot. People on the inside aren’t going to be willing to talk to you the way you want and give you the kind of access I know you want. But you should have coffee with my sister.” And that’s how I met Ilhan.

When we met for coffee, I immediately knew that this was the perfect setting to address some of the issues that had been interesting me for such a long time. One of my favorite documentaries had been a film called Street Fight that a director named Marshall Curry did about Cory Booker, now Sen. Cory Booker. This was when he was first making the transition from community organizing after going to law school as he was trying to get into politics. And, similarly, it was a story of his campaign for mayor. I have always loved that film. So I immediately thought, “Wow, this could be that, only a woman, aSomali, Muslim woman, in a place like Minnesota, of all things!” And the fact that she was challenging a 43-year incumbent, also a woman, and that this was a challenge on the left of the left: this wasn’t your typical political battle between the forces of conservatives versus the forces of the liberals. This was a little more nuanced and, therefore, a little more interesting to me. And then, as if that weren’t enough, add the fact that there was a Somali man in the mix [candidate Mohamud Noor]. So not only did you have the dynamics of the long-time incumbent, the older white woman, but you also had gender dynamics. To me that was a recipe for a fascinating project, whatever the outcome would be. It would allow me to explore the issues and themes that interested me but with living, breathing, charismatic, dynamic characters. I felt it in my gut that even if Ilhan didn’t win that race—because at that point she was such an underdog—she was extraordinary, and I knew that she was a star. And if even that wasn’t the race that got her into office, it was a beginning of what was going to be pretty special. So I was intrigued enough and willing enough to go on the ride.

SHF

The film is like a Who’s Who of Minneapolis politics. I’m like, “I know that person, I know that person, I know that person.”

NS

That’s why I’m so excited for the movie to premiere here, because I can’t wait for people to see themselves.

SHF

Were you intentional about what you showed in the film?

NS

Let me start by saying, what was intentional was in the editing. You could take the same set of facts and the same story, and take a bunch of different filmmakers, and they’re all going to make a different film. So this idea that documentary is objective is completely false. Of course, what I decide to point the camera at, there are all these other things that aren’t being captured, right? I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage, all condensed down to an 89-minute story.

SHF

So you picked the best parts, or what was most interesting?

NS

Well, you make choices. You open doors and you close doors. I’m never going to argue about what someone else’s reality or experience of the campaign was—not from this story that I intentionally chose to tell for lots and lots of reasons, some of which include my position not being inside that community. Let’s just call it what it is: I’m a white, Jewish woman. I’m not a member of the Somali community, obviously. Although I’ve always been politically active, I’m not a deep insider in the DFL [the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Minnesota’s Democratic Party]. So I come in as an outsider, in a way, but also as someone enough inside to have sensitivity and understand nuance and all of that.

SFH

The campaign got nasty a couple times. How did you approach representing that nastiness in the film?

NS

Some of what was going on was really nasty. I was hearing about it, but I wasn’t necessarily capturing all of it on film. I made decisions; there’s only so much real estate in a feature film, right? I decided I didn’t want to overly make Phyllis the villain. There was a temptation, but I think that through how Phyllis approached representing the constituency and how she campaigned, it comes out. I think I was gracious with her. There are things I could have included that would have made her look worse, but I wanted that to be balanced.

As far as what was going on inside the Somali community, I also considered that storyline, as well as the question of this divide, the divided community. Again it came down to: what story am I telling? Does that take us down another road? Is it too complicated? Does it take up too much real estate? How do I make this story appeal at a national level, at an international level, not just for the hyper-local and for those people who understand Minnesota politics, Minneapolis politics, the specifics of the personalities and the specific communities? So there was always that tension being balanced, this idea in terms of storytelling: what is the universal? What are the specifics we need to keep to give it its grit and its texture and its authenticity, and what is the balance between those?

I was always aware of a lot that was going on that didn’t make it into the film. There also was a dynamic related to how much access as I was given: you also can’t be everywhere at all times. I wasn’t following Kahn and Noor in the same way. Ilhan was my main subject. I was trying to follow them enough to be fair. I had limitations in what they would allow. I tried to encapsulate those tensions, that they were there and that they involved gender. Did I go far beyond that in terms of what was going on? No.

SHF

So, how long did you film?

NS

We shot some footage on Christmas Eve. Ilhan invited me to come, and it was some event or fundraiser for her. But effectively we started filming in the very beginning of January 2016. And she thought the race was going to be over much faster. It kept having these second and third winds after what happened at the convention [the 2016 DFL convention ended in a deadlock with neither candidate getting enough delegates to secure the party’s nomination]. They hoped that would be it, and they came very close. And then she won the primary, and it kept going. So then we figured, OK, this is bigger.

The day after the election, the New York Times calls her a bright spot in the post-election darkness. She starts to become coveted by the national media, and then everything started to happen so fast—the Muslim ban, and the position Ilhan ended up taking, and coverage by national platforms—and I kept hearing from people, not from Minnesota, with more of a bird’s eye view, who said, “You have to keep filming.” So we decided to keep following Ilhan. Effectively, it ended up covering the campaign and then into her first year in office. There are enough hurdles to overcome for someone like Ilhan to get into office in the first place, but then, once you get there, there’s this other world that’s a part of the story.

The other thing that ended up happening was this wave and this larger hunger not only for women, but for black women, women of color, outsider candidates. And look what has happened since the time we stopped filming, which was just up until we had to the film delivered to Tribeca in April. We were up and current at the ending of the film, but it was very intentional: evoking this larger context, this larger wave that Ilhan is a part of. Now look: we’ve got Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York and candidates all across the country—all these stories of challenges inside the left wing, inside the Democratic party. Challenges from candidates like Ilhan saying, “Stop telling me to wait. And I don’t care if you’re telling me to wait. I’m not waiting anymore.” And that’s still in flux, in terms of what that’s going to mean as we roll into the midterms and then as we go forward to 2020.

My huge hope and dream for this movie is that it will inspire people—women, women of color, young people—to get involved at the grassroots level. Ilhan didn’t start out running for US Congress. She started out running for a Minnesota state house position.

SFH

I wanted to know how you gain access to your subjects. What’s that process like? I know you met Ilhan organically, but it’s one thing to meet someone and another to make a documentary about them—especially with someone who is guarded, and she seems like someone who is guarded.

NS

It all comes down to two things: trust and relationship building. And it helps if you are someone who has a track record and a body of work. In the case of Ilhan, I don’t know, to be honest, that if I hadn’t had an introduction and a stamp of approval from someone she deeply trusted that she necessarily would have agreed.

SFH

I know that to be the case, actually. It took forever to get an interview with her, and it took even longer for her to sign the release. And the way she signed it was that she finally realized who my dad is, and she has a lot of respect for my dad. As a woman, I was really insulted, and I was like: Wait, as a woman you should just take me for who I am. But I think that’s sort of her process because she’s in such a precarious position as a public figure. And, honestly, I think this applies to almost anyone. You need a strong vetting process, you know?

NS

Here’s the thing. So you have to gain the trust of your subject, and that has to do with everything you bring to the table: who you are, who you know, what your work is, your art is. In my case, with Ilhan, it really mattered to her that I had been a public defender. She talks about this all the time. She felt that we had a meeting of minds, that we had shared values, a shared political vision. She brought people to the table, and I had to meet with them and convince them. But that’s just the beginning. You have to continue to earn trust. And it’s one thing for someone to say yes to you when they’re a relative unknown. I have a friend who was recently on a journey with a subject and had invested a lot of time, energy, money, heart, soul, dream, everything, and then circumstances got to a certain point and doors were closed. That can happen.

There’s a scene on the movie where that happens, and that’s the one point in the movie where I broke the fourth wall. There’s a text that explains that, actually, for a period, we were denied access. So that’s the life and death of a documentary filmmaker. It’s also part of the exhilaration—and what makes it heart-stopping and why it’s not for everybody. Because you don’t know what’s going to happen.

But back to this question of gaining trust, there were people on the campaign who were much more in favor of the documentary, and there were people who were less so. So that was a dynamic as well. To Ilhan’s credit, and I can’t say this enough, but she hung in there. She and I both took a leap of faith to go on this journey together. And I was very clear upfront about my independence, the access I needed, and the creative control. And they honored it. She honored it. And think of how risky that is. I think that was incredibly brave. She said something interesting in a Q&A; we were in Martha’s Vineyard the week after the primary election. She said she worried initially, and along the way at times, that having cameras present was going to have a chilling effect on the people that she was trying to interact with. It was less so—maybe an annoyance or an irritation or a worry—but she talked about how eventually she forgot we were there.

SFH

So, what’s next for you? Are you going to stay connected to Minnesota stories and topics, or are you going to put the camera on something else?

NS

That’s a good question. The next project is also a Minnesota story—I’m not directing, but the cinematographer is directing this next one and I’m producing—and it’s a film about the Jacob Wetterling story.

SFH

The boy that went missing?

NS

Yes, and when we were filming, the case was resolved. So when we started out, it was still this 26-year-and-running mystery, unsolved case, and the case was solved during the filming.

SFH

So you’re sort of hitting a sweet spot with all your films.

NS

It does look that way. It’s sort of a dream. With that one, we have a bit of production left, but we’re in post-production. It’s going to be about another year to finish. In the meantime, I am spending a lot of time with Time for Ilhan. Not just publicity and promotion, but we’re actually trying to do something with this film. We have designed and are still working on a pretty ambitious social impact and outreach campaign, outside of traditional distribution. Traditional distribution would be, you know, festivals, theatrical broadcasts, on demand kind of things. And we’re going after all that stuff.

Documentary film has the power to move people and inspire people to action that few other things do. And there has been an expertise and a track record built up of using certain films toward social change. And so we’re in the middle of building a campaign in which the film is used as a tool by the people who are already doing grassroots work, developing candidates in these communities, and activating young people and communities to participate civically and politically where they haven’t. Our participation voting rates in this country are abysmal. If only every community was as active as the Somali community in the Twin Cities. It’s exciting and invigorating. And part of the hope is showing what’s possible to people who haven’t felt like there’s a place for them, and then connecting right when you come out of the movie or having a program to connect people in their communities with people who are running or organizations that are doing the work.