‘Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down’ Directors Talk Congresswoman’s ‘Inspiring’ Rehab From Brain Trauma (Video)
12.03.2022 - 20:13
/ thewrap.com
Julie Cohen and Betsy West knew they had to make their movie “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” about former U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords when, in their first video call with her, they saw that she and her husband, Sen. Mark Kelly, had kept a piece of her skull in a tupperware in their freezer.
Right next to the empanadas. “They showed that to us early on and we immediately were like, that’s a scene in our film,” Cohen told TheWrap, even though in the moment, their documentary didn’t yet exist. “We were just dazzled really by Gabby in particular from that very first wonderful meeting.”“From the very moment we met Gabby, it was obvious she would make an incredible subject for a documentary,” West added.
Giffords was a rising star in the Democratic Party when in 2011 she was shot in the head during a mass shooting in Arizona. Many news outlets even declared her dead. She not only survived but has rehabilitated to be able to lead activist work on sensible gun control and help her husband win a senate seat.
But Cohen and West’s (“RBG,” “Julia,” “My Name is Pauli Murray”) new documentary film shows Giffords is far more than just her accident. “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down,” which premieres at SXSW on Saturday, discusses her early career, her fight for sensible gun control and her unique romance with Mark Kelly. But it centers heavily on Giffords’ struggle with a speech condition known as aphasia, which is a language disorder in which a person is unable to understand or express speech, despite being able to think the words in your brain.
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