‘One Day in October’ Director Dan Reed on the Toll of Documenting Terror Attacks: ‘I Once Woke Up Smelling Charred Human Flesh’
variety.comK.J. Yossman Documentary filmmaker Dan Reed, whose work includes Michael Jackson doc “Leaving Neverland” and HBO’s recent “The Truth vs Alex Jones,” has found his calling in getting people to relive “the worst day in their life,” as he describes it.
As well as delving into subjects as grim as child sexual abuse (he won an Emmy and a BAFTA for “Leaving Neverland”) and the Sandy Hook massacre, he has made numerous documentaries about large-scale terror attacks including the Moscow theater hostage crisis of 2002, the 60-hour siege of Mumbai in 2008 and the Nairobi Westgate mall attack of 2013.
How does Reed manage to revisit some of the world’s most barbarous acts without succumbing to despair? By knowing that he is performing a vital role in bearing witness and relaying victims’ stories to the wider public. “I have this sort of mental barrier that gives me an alibi for being there and then also shields me from the direct impact,” he explains.
But Reed admits that every film he makes “does haunt me.” Earlier in his career, after working in warzones such as Bosnia and Kosovo, he realized that he’d stopped dreaming. “My nights were completely blank,” he recalls. “And I interpreted that as my self-defence mechanism.
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