The challenge in making Sidney — about the pioneering Black actor, filmmaker and activist Sidney Poitier — was knowing where to stop, director Reginald Hudlin said during an appearance for Deadline’s Contenders Film: New York event at The Times Center in Manhattan. “He had a long life, and every year of his life was consequential,” Hudlin said in a live video interview discussing the Apple Original Films documentary. “His teenage years were consequential.
The circumstances of his birth were consequential. His retirement — he was an incredible mentor to an amazing range of people.
So we wanted to get everything.” “And honestly, there’s always a slight period of mourning after you finish a movie like this over the things you weren’t able to put in,” Hudlin said.
Poitier, who died in January at age 94, did not live to see the finished film, Hudlin said. But the anchor of Sidney is material from two days of interviews, previously unaired, that the Oscar winner did with the film’s producer, Oprah Winfrey.
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