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[0:09] Robert Bannon: Well, welcome to the round table, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon. You're watching us on Broadway World over here on the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeartSpotify, wherever you are listening, Earth Day is on the horizon. The world is literally like on fire as we speak. And we've got two people that are gonna talk to us about a brand new film that you need to check out. I think that they could probably call Leonardo DiCaprio right now on his cell phone. I bet they have a way to get in touch with him right this second. He's worked, Rob, I've seen your other films. And Chelsea is here as another filmmaker here to talk about the importance of what's going on in the world with a brand new film because we're the guardians, and I'm excited for people to check it out. Welcome to the round table.

[0:50] Chelsea Greene: Oh, thank you so much, Robert.

[0:52] Rob Grobman: Yeah, thank you, Robert. It's great to be here.

[0:54] Robert Bannon: So who came up with this idea to go to Brazil and talk about what's going on? Was it you, Rob, was it Chelsea? How did it come about?

[1:02] Chelsea Greene: It's really funny because me and Rob independently had the same idea in 2019 when we saw the news of the fires on TV. I was traveling in Africa at the time, and I saw the news and I was like, I just have to drop everything and go to Brazil and start filming. And Rob had the same idea.

[1:20] Rob Grobman: Yeah, meanwhile, I was in Oregon and I saw the fires happening. It made international headlines and it was like, oh my god, I have to do something about this. Like I can't just not sit back and watch something like this be destroyed. And for the present for future generations, I felt this incredible calling to the Amazon. And yeah, seven years later, we're here about to debut the film. It's incredible.

[1:44] Robert Bannon: It's incredible that it's taken you this seven years. When we talk about it, it's produced by Fisher Stevens, who is from The Cove. It is produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. How do you guys as environmental filmmakers, Chelsea, when you decide to be an environmental filmmaker? I'm sure people say to you, you're never gonna make any money. You're never gonna, you're gonna be out here in these streets chasing what does what does it mean? You're gonna go to dangerous places, you're gonna who's gonna how you gonna how you gonna make this movie? How did you overcome the barriers and now have a movie that's coming not only nationally, internationally around the world? What's the process like of how you got together and this happened?

[2:26] Chelsea Greene: Well, I think this film was meant to be. I really think when certain projects are supposed to happen, the universe conspires to help us. And that was definitely the case with We Are Guardians. I mean, for one, Rob and I were complete strangers when we started the project, and then a journalist that we had both worked with, and funny enough, we even like passed each other in a hallway, interviewing the same scientist on the same day earlier, but didn't meet at that point. And then when we were introduced, we figured out we had complimentary footage. And I started, I was living in Vermont at the time, and I moved to Oregon to start working with him. And we were romantically involved for a few years, which also really helped the film because we were just like in it together, you know, as like our baby.

And so many things happened that and yes, also my parents were like, I don't know about this, chill. Like, are you gonna be able to make money? Everything that you just said. But we found the best partners that wanted to invest and help us along the way. And it just seemed like Fisher coming into the picture, and then later Leo joining and helping us get our Netflix deal. It was really so synchronistic. Finding our characters. I mean, I just think that we just kept me and Rob had this really intentional way of going about it where everything we needed to do, we would just ask, you know, in ceremony and pray and, you know, stay in touch with the spiritual reasons that we're doing all this honestly to heal Mother Earth.

[3:37] Robert Bannon: Absolutely. Now you said so much that's so scandalous and fun that I have so many questions about, but I'm gonna keep it about the movie. But I'm happy you two get along and are happy and that you have this baby together and that you are co-parenting this baby together with your incredible art that is beautiful and a lesson in and of itself. So Rob, for you, what was filming this like? I know you both had you could have been competing people. You could have, she could have been the enemy and you could have been the enemy and you could have put out movies together, but you've come together when you had this footage. What is the story?

[3:37] Rob Grobman: Well, the story is of the people of the Amazon, which meant so much to me to get to really drop in in an intimate way with all of the people that you'll see in the film. And, you know, cooperation and symbiosis I think is way more the way of nature than we give credit to. And that was so much of what this project was for me was for Chelsea. You know, why make two projects when we can make one and combine our efforts? And when we did that and made that choice, it totally took off. So we've been rewarded in that kind of way bringing Edivon on, who's another co-director on the film who grew up in the same village as Mark Saul, he's an indigenous man from LaGuajajara, who's an incredible journalist, an incredible photographer and filmmaker.

Having him join and be a part of this. And when we started, Chelsea and I barely knew Portuguese. So we've learned to communicate with him. We've learned some of his indigenous language of two P. It's been the most incredible journey of my life. And it's amazing that it's all on film as well for other people to share. It's so exciting.

[5:42] Chelsea Greene: So Chelsea, for you, you know, I talked to documentary filmmakers a lot. And the one thing I'm I would just talk to somebody about Appalachian people. We just did a documentary and I said, they're tough. How do they trust you? And that's here within the United States. How do you go to a country where you did not speak the language when this started? You did not have a lot of connections, you did not have family, friends that were down there, and get people to tell you their story. Trust the lady with a camera.

[6:09] Chelsea Greene: Yeah, great question. And also there is a lot of distrust in Brazil for American filmmakers, especially and amongst the indigenous people, because so many journalists and filmmakers go to their territory and try to extract their stories. You know, some might say colonistically and then don't return anything. And so for in and there's different ways to talk about here because you know there's a logger character in the film. And we got some farmers in the film, and those are especially amongst the less trustful group because they're constantly being blamed for the fires when the film reveals it's these huge companies and the system of corruption that's meant to keep people in the Amazon enslaved not making any money at their extractive industries.

Whereas they can be taken using a bio economy, they can switch to a bio economy and make much more money per hectare of land with a standing forest economy than these extractive industries. The majority of deforestation comes from starts with logging and then ends up, you know, the logging roads being used to open slash and burn pastures, et cetera, and so on. And mining is becoming a huge issue too. So it's really with the indigenous, we listen to what they need. They had so many requests. Obviously, they're going out on these death-defying missions to find illegal invaders in the forest, and they need supplies, they need help, they need tactical things like drones, and so we were able to mid filming bring them some of the things they needed, and over time, you know, continuously bring trust.

And it always helped that we had very attractive, beautiful Brazilian translators and field producers helping us too and people from the community like Edgy Found, their co-director, you know, he brought us in and introduced us to the guardians there, and we saw Marsal, and we were like, oh my god, he has such a big heart. He was one of the missing pieces of the film who truly lives from the forest, has such a beautiful big heart. And he's actually and his group of guardians are protecting these uncontacted tribes, which me and Rob always think is the most mystical part of this whole story that there are still uncontacted groups of humans living in the Amazon, never seeing the outside world, maybe in up to a hundred individual groups, right?

And so we were able to gain their trust through years, and since then we've been able to return on a lot of our promises with building this impact campaign, and we are now passing, you know, the funds that the film raises to them, and we've raised quite a bit of money and we've helped them build a program that's helped them plant over a hundred thousand trees at this point, reforesting parts of the territory. And so really that's how we build the trust of the indigenous. And I always like to talk about the, you know, farmers and the loggers, especially the loggers, because Valgier is such a fascinating character. I think out of all the guardians or out of all the loggers we could have found out in the middle of the vast forest he was the most interesting and that's one of those synchronistic moments that you know happened to make this film happen because we had to set out into the middle of nowhere in these spider tank spidery web of logging roads and just find someone to film and it was dangerous.

[9:24] Chelsea Greene: The guy who you know was a liaison for us was like these guys are armed, they don't want to be found, and I'm scared maybe we should turn back, and we're like we've got to do this, but if it's really that bad then we will. And then right at the last moment we came across this man and his friend in the middle of the road pulling a log out, and we went and just asked him can we interview you, we're just trying to tell your side of the story, and he said yes. He actually invited us back to his logging camp, and we bonded, and we made friends, and he was so sweet to us. And then we came back six months later after our whole team was like wow this guy has to be a character in the film and managed to find him again in the middle of nowhere, you know him not having a phone, no way to communicate, and we think that he's very connected with the great spirit of the forest, you know these types of things because he just knew that we were coming back and he was supposed to be a part of this.

Even when the film came out on Netflix, um, and there was a huge military police operation to remove all the loggers from that area, and when we got death threats he still stood by us, you know, and that was incredible.

[10:34] Chelsea Greene: So that's, you know, I think some we were made able to get the trust just from the, I think part of the intention that I was describing earlier of me and Rob just really wanting to honor their story and um try to break down this polarization that's actually blocking us from getting progress done.

[10:50] Robert Bannon: I, while you were talking, I quit four times in your conversation. I was like, I'm out. This is too scary and hard. I'm out, I'm out, I'm out. And you guys stuck through it and made this film.

[11:01] Rob Grobman: There's a hot uh un tribes that nobody okay, that all right. I'm I don't have a lot of questions, but we Rob, there are people in the Amazon then and that have right now they're living, they're living completely uh separated from modern world, living in the forest, through the forest, off the forest, uh with complex societies and complex language systems. Um group, like Chelsea said, in the middle of the Gwajajara territory, and they don't know how many of them are there. They guess maybe 50 to 100, maybe 200. Um, but they're really guardians of these people. Um, and they see it that way, they see them as relatives, even though they've never made contact themselves.

[11:47] Rob Grobman: I'm so happy you all are on the side. They can't make contact because they don't have immunity to modern diseases, so even if they were to touch logging equipment that was left behind, they could get bacteria and perish. So, and they're very scared, you know. So if there's some footage in the film that's never, you know, the first footage ever captured that close from the ground of a non-contacted person. Um, and that's very fascinating. They just captured it, it's all on a long lens, by the way. When you see it, you'll be like, No, now that you two are here, they're gonna be viewers of my show.

[12:17] Robert Bannon: We're gonna bring them into don't get bringingers of society. They're gonna we have a new audience. No, Rob, when we make a documentary, there's no beginning, middle, or end. You don't know how this is gonna end, you don't know the story and where it's gonna go. So, how do you prepare for that as a filmmaker?

[12:32] Rob Grobman: Well, it was amazing on this one to have the mentorship that we had, like Fisher Stevens joining. He was uh incredible in guiding us as far as pre-production and really developing kind of archetypes of who we wanted to bring in to have this really full perspective of what's happening in the Amazon and what's happening on the ground. Um, and with that, yeah, we put the intention out there of finding these types of people, and like Chelsea said, um, through synchronistic moments, through a lot of research, we've we found uh, you know, all the people that you see in the film, and it's um it's an ongoing relationship. It's not it's not like you film and then it's done.

[13:14] Rob Grobman: Um, for us, it's it's a continued relationship. I mean, we've been talking with Valgier and his wife uh on WhatsApp uh just uh in the last couple weeks. Um, we continue to talk with Marcel, we continue to talk with Puy. She's a big part of the impact campaign and helping lead what's happening um with those efforts. So uh it really doesn't begin with filming and it doesn't end with filming either.

[13:39] Chelsea Greene: You're all very in terms of like making this film work, right? Because there's so many moving parts. Our editor, who's an Academy Award-winning editor, Autanus, he was an amazing professor of dramaturgy. We learned so much, right? It's like having all these five main characters and then weaving all their storylines together where there's an informational arc of what's happening in the Amazon for people that don't understand it all, and it there being so many complexities in history and economics and science.

[14:06] Rob Grobman: Um, we had some incredible people help us too. We've had we had a writer, we had um, you know, we went back four times, and so in between the second and third tri and the third and fourth trips, especially um we had an editing consultant who was helping us go through all the footage and weave this narrative um from what we had and and try to think of what we can get. And so that was, you know, from moving construction perspective.

[14:35] Rob Grobman: I want to say like we have to just yeah, you know, my advice is to stay determined, find people who are story geniuses. You always need outside perspective. Don't give up, it's gonna take a long time. There's no way around it. The only way is through it.

[14:48] Robert Bannon: And you're both very modest because they say about the amount of money they raised and the amount of trees that were planted. It's well over a million and point dot dot dot millions of dollars that have been raised for this through this. It already was out on Netflix. It's gonna be everywhere on the 22nd. You can, I believe Rob maybe or Chelsea know more than me, but it's gonna be on Tubi. It's gonna be available on Apple, it's gonna be available on wherever, really, really wherever you get, wherever you get Google Play, iTunes, Apple TV, but and on Tubi for f as well.

[15:19] Robert Bannon: So it's accessible to anyone who has a computer, a television, a phone. If you have one of those things, you'll be able to see this movie. How important is that for you, Rob, that this is gonna be nationally available to everybody globally?

[15:30] Rob Grobman: It's incredible. I mean it it's it's beyond, you know, it's it's amazing for me, but it's it's amazing for these stories to get to get to out there and to to um for the world to see what's happening in the Amazon um in an honest way, and um for for these people to really have like they put themselves on the line in being a part of this film in a way that I am I'm forever grateful, and uh it's it's uh it's really about them and their message.

[15:56] Rob Grobman: So yeah, definitely please check it out. We are guardiansfilms.com.

[16:01] Robert Bannon: We are, let me say that again, more without my Jersey accent. We are guardiansfilm.com. The link will be below, and you can check it out. Chelsea, it's a real place. It's not just an history book, it's not just a picture on Google, like it's a real place with real people that have real implications to the entire planet.

[16:18] Chelsea Greene: Yes, exactly. And I always want to bring in the perspective of our indigenous counterparts in this project. This is a tool to reforest our minds. It's a call for humanity to come together in a time when we need us to have unity and strength the most. So please join us. It's more than a film, it's a movement, and we're so happy for you all to be guardians.

[16:38] Robert Bannon: All right. I want to be a guardian, a guardian of the like guardians of the galaxy. You could be guardian of the of the of the Amazon, of the rainforest, of the incredible plants, animals, people of this world. You know, I was thinking about I'll keep you two more minutes while I was thinking about y'all when we're talking about the people who have been in the rainforest, which I'm gonna stick with that. It's gonna be in my head now for the rest of my life. If I was, you know, if I was another spin on a wheel, that could be you. It could be you could be living there, you know.

[17:05] Robert Bannon: Like we have to look as humanity as the world, that these are people that have feelings and families and needs just like we do, and we all really need to take care of each other. We're all here as siblings on this planet, and it's really important that we hear their story and support them the best that we can. Thank you for what you're doing.

[17:23] Chelsea Greene: Yeah, so well so. So it's important.

[17:27] Robert Bannon: All right, thank you, everybody. Go ahead, go, go, go, go. We are guardiansfilm.com. You have to be, you know, you watch all of those movies on Tube people. Now watch something on Earth Day that's gonna teach you, educate you, and and be there for you. Um, and we hope to have you both back. Thank you for being here.

[17:40] Chelsea Greene: Hey, thank you so much, Robert.

[17:43] Rob Grobman: You're awesome.

[17:44] Chelsea Greene: Thank you.