About the Director
Asako Gladsjo is an award-winning documentary director, producer, and writer who lives in Harlem, just two miles from the medical complex. Asako’s recent credits include Rise and Rebuild: A Tale of Three Cities, co-directed with Sam Pollard for One Story Up and Tribeca Studios; Why We Hate (Senior Producer), executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Alex Gibney for Discovery; (Un)Well (Director/Producer) for Netflix; and NAACP Image Award winner By Whatever Means Necessary (Series Writer/Senior Producer), executive produced by Forest Whitaker and Nina Yang Bongiovi for Epix. She also directed and senior produced the acclaimed six-hour PBS series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates Jr., which won Emmy, DuPont, Peabody, and NAACP Image awards, the Emmy-nominated PBS special Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise and multiple seasons of the PBS series Finding Your Roots and African American Lives. She also teaches directing at the School of Visual Arts’ MFA Social Documentary Film program.
Director's Statement
How did this film come about? How did the idea originate? What inspired you?
I have long been troubled by medical inequity in America. In a wealthy country like the U.S., why doesn’teveryone have access to life-saving medical care? Yet seeing the sacrifices health care workers madeduring the COVID-19 pandemic, even in this flawed system, made me curious about the people choosingto become doctors today. So when executive producers Tim Smith and Charles Tremayne proposed theidea of developing a film at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx, I jumped at the chance.
My biggest inspiration was a doctor who I knew well: my daughters' pediatrician, Dr. Christopher Phang. As a rare Black male physician serving a diverse community in Harlem, Dr. Phang connected effortlessly with patients and families of all backgrounds. He was knowledgeable and caring, inspiring trust that allowed him to provide excellent care. (By coincidence, he also mentored one of the first-year students we followed for the film, Andrew Peck.) After Dr. Phang's untimely passing during production, I dedicated the film to his memory and to the hope that the students we filmed might become doctors like him.
How long did it take to make the film? From concept to finish.
We started developing the idea in August 2021 and completed the film -- including the Nona Hendryx version of the Leonard Cohen song "Come Healing" for the final credits -- in April 2024.
Why did you make this film?
I felt somewhat cynical about the medical profession before I made this film. Living without health insurance for many years, I felt that health care in the U.S. was a capitalist enterprise more focused on profit than people, which reflected the racism, sexism, and class bias of our society. Yet I knew that becoming a doctor required a huge amount of personal sacrifice, and I wanted to understand that contradiction. Meeting the students, faculty, and physician mentors at Einstein was such a humbling experience that I became eager to share with audiences. I hope that young people from diverse backgrounds who might consider pursuing medicine will take inspiration from the film's subjects and make our health care system better for everyone.
Share a story about filming; anything that you found interesting along the way with your filming journey.
I hadn't immediately realized the importance of Match Day, when all fourth-year medical students across the country find out at the same time where they'll become residents. We had to coordinate with the school and bring in multiple camera crews that day to cover the event. Watching the students find out where they were going, after four years of incredibly hard work, was very moving. Some of us ended up in tears!
Did the film change from your original idea for the film as you were filming or in post?
I thought we would focus on just a few students, relying mostly on verité scenes. But our access turned out to be more limited than we hoped, so we included interviews and video diaries to make up for the moments we were not allowed to film.
What were the challenges in making this film?
The biggest challenge was access. Despite the helpful staff at Einstein, Montefiore, and the Institute for Family Health, many aspects of the students' learning and patient care were off limits. We had to weave the moments we could capture with different students into a composite portrait of the med-school experience. We also had to work around the students' demanding schedules since filming needed to take a distant second place to the real mission -- their education. A few students dropped out of the film either because of their schedules or because we could not get permission to film key scenes.
What were the successes that you had in making this film?
Every student with whom we filmed, including a few who didn't end up in the final cut, impressed us with their dedication and brilliance. Maybe Einstein attracts a special breed of students; their decision to pursue their medical education in the Bronx -- one of America's most underserved communities -- proved that they weren't afraid to face challenges. After we finished filming, we learned that philanthropist Dr. Ruth Gottesman had made Einstein tuition free with a generous donation of $1 billion. Younger students and all future Einstein classes now are able to pursue their education without the cost of tuition, which I hope will open the doors to even more diverse students.
What do you want audiences to take away from this film?
We hope that audiences will gain a deeper understanding of what it takes to become a doctor and why it's valuable for doctors to work in underserved communities as part of their education. I also want young people from different backgrounds to realize that they could become doctors, too!
Was there a special technique or a tool that you employed in making the film and moving the story further?
We asked the students to record video diaries if they felt comfortable doing so. Some of the students -- especially Tiffany Liu and Chetali Jain -- blew us away with their painfully honest, lucid diaries that illuminated their private struggles and gave another dimension to the film.
Meet the Team
Director of Photography
Asad Faruqi is a Brooklyn-based Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who identifies as South Asian and primarily works as a cinematographer. Armed With Faith (PBS), a film that he produced, shot and co-directed, won a News and Documentary Emmy for Outstanding Political and Government Documentary. He has lensed award-winning films on topics ranging from critical social issues to violence, war, and conflict. For Asad, film is a form of political art, and he always has been interested in exploring the stories at the cross sections of religion, politics, and identity. His other cinematography credits include HBO’s Academy and Emmy Award-winning documentary shorts: A Girl in the River and Saving Face. Other notable cinematography credits include Call Center Blues (Topic), Black and Missing (HBO), The Killing of Breonna Taylor (Hulu/FX), And She Could Be Next (PBS), New Homeland, A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers (PBS), Song of Lahore, and Pakistan’s Taliban Generation (PBS), which garnered the Emmy and Alfred I. Dupont Award. He also co-directed, produced, and photographed A Marriage, which was the official selection of the 2021 Hot Docs Festival.
Executive Producers
Tim Smith is an award-winning television and documentary executive who has worked for MSNBC, Newsweek Productions, and PBS Newshour, and now, the American Issues Initiative, where he executive produced Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook. For The Calling, he initially approached Albert Einstein College of Medicine for access to tell the story of medical inequity in today’s health system. Over the years, Tim has produced films for NOVA, Frontline, National Geographic, HBO, and NBC and, in the process, has garnered two Emmys, five Emmy nominations, two Gracie Awards, a Grierson, and both Cable Ace and Genesis Award nominations. His films have been supported by prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Sloan Foundation, Kauffman Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, Carnegie Corp. of New York, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, JPB Foundation, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Charles Tremayne is an Emmy-winning and BAFTA-nominated executive who edited the long-running World in Action investigative series in the UK before coming to America to set up a joint venture with The New York Times. There, he produced films and series for NOVA, Frontline, A&E, Discovery, PBS, and National Geographic and created the long-running crime series The First 48. He also worked with legendary director Michael Apted on 42 Up, a part of the 7 Up series, and was executive producer of 21 Up America, 21 Up South Africa, and 21 Up: Born in the USSR. He was President of Cineflix Productions before starting his own company, First Story Productions, as part of Cineflix Media.
Sean B. Carroll is an internationally recognized biologist, award-winning author, and Emmy-winning executive producer. Sean was the architect of HHMI’s filmmaking initiative to bring great stories about scientists and science to broad audiences and head of Tangled Bank Studios until late 2023. The studio’s recent film All That Breathes was the first to win the World Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and the L’Œil d’or “Golden Eye” documentary award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival; the film went on to earn an Academy Award nomination. Other notable films include Emmy nominee My Garden of a Thousand Bees, which won the top award at Wildscreen, and Emmy winning-films The Farthest: Voyager in Space and The Serengeti Rules, the latter of which was based on his book of the same title.
Wilma L. Davis is executive producer of select documentary projects for HHMI Tangled Bank Studios. She also oversees a slate of scripted film and television projects as producer of dramatic films. Her extensive experience working with A-list Hollywood filmmakers was instrumental in the launch of a dramatic film arm aimed to amplify the impact of the studio’s inspiring science storytelling. Recent studio documentary credits include Oscar nominee All That Breathes, Emmy winners The Serengeti Rules, The Farthest: Voyager in Space, and Every Little Thing, which premiered at Sundance 2024.
