Alumni Portrait: Daphne Matziaraki and the making of “4.1 Miles”

Rosa Furneaux (’18) talks to documentary producer Daphne Matziaraki, a 2016 graduate of the J-School; her mentor, independent filmmaker and J-School lecturer Samantha Grant, and New York Times Op-Doc producer Kathleen Lingo, who saw unusual quality in the first-time filmmaker’s work.

Daphne Matziaraki had barely picked up a camera before she enrolled in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s documentary program in 2014. Two years later, her thesis film 4.1 Miles premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, won a Student Academy Award, screened at the International Documentary Film Amsterdam (IDFA) festival in Europe, and now has been nominated for an Oscar.

Daphne had already earned her bona fides as a journalist, reporting on humanitarian and economic crises in Africa and Europe for European news outlets before she switched to film. “I had wanted to do documentary for a long time,” she says. “That’s what got me into journalism in the first place.” While interning for filmmaker and J-School instructor and alum Samantha Grant, she applied to the J-School, where she worked under Jon Else, Dan Krauss and Orlando Bagwell, who now directs the documentary program.

Her thesis film, 4.1 Miles, took her back to her native Greece during the current refugee crisis, the largest since the Second World War. “It’s a huge tragedy,” Matziaraki says. “Really I was overwhelmed, and a little oversaturated with the coverage.”

But she also felt detached from the tragedy at home. “I wanted to make a film that would bridge this gap, this distance that I think we all feel when we read some kind of terrible news [happening] on the other end of the world, but we are in our safe place, living our everyday safe lives,” she says.

That bridge and the film’s power came in the form of the Greek coast guard captain who allowed Matziaraki to join him on rescue missions from the island of Lesbos. “I feel that through being on the boat and through the captain, the main character, the audience really understands what’s going on, and what this refugee crisis is really about,” she says. “The reality of it is, it’s just kids and families, who are all terrified.”

Those watching 4.1 Miles may empathize with the captain, Matziaraki says. “He’s not an equipped or trained doctor or a volunteer. He’s somebody that didn’t choose to be in this situation. I feel this resonates because most of us don’t choose to be in a situation like that, or we would never imagine ourselves being in a situation like that.”

Kathleen Lingo, executive producer for The New York Times’ Op-Docs series–which posted a version of the film–said telling the story through the eyes of the coast guard skipper gave Matziaraki’s film a unique angle, which stood out to the Times acquisitions team. Op-Docs does not usually feature films that explore traditional news stories, but 4.1 Miles felt to her like “a really necessary film.”

“One of the hardest things for a storyteller to do is to make someone who wasn’t there and isn’t related to a problem feel something about it,” Lingo says. Op-Docs has screened the film across the country, and she has seen how audiences respond. “When it plays on the big screen and those shots come up of the ocean, the people in it, I mean there’s just such an audible gasp. I’ve never seen an audience react with so much shock,” she says.

J-School instructor Sam Grant agrees that the film’s impact stems from those rescue scenes, and the way Matziaraki handled their shooting and editing. She points to an extended section in which children and families are pulled from the water as “the moment that [she] realized how important this film was.”

“It’s such a mature decision to do that, to let the shot go on and on and not give in to the urge to make a cut. To try to enhance the drama. That single shot was so intense and so dramatic on its own that the most sophisticated decision was to let it play out, and that’s what she did. And that shot is burned into my brain,” Grant says.

For Matziaraki, the film’s success has been unexpected.”I did not have it in mind while I was making the film,” she says. “I’m extremely honored and humbled and grateful because I feel, of course, if I hadn’t gone to the J-School none of this would have happened.”

However, she says, the greatest reward has been the chance to raise awareness of the crisis to a bigger audience at film festivals and awards shows. “It’s not an activist film, it doesn’t have a call to action. But I feel it does have an impact,” she says, “and I’m really, really happy and grateful for that.”

Lingo agrees. “In many ways I feel the film is something that pushes the viewer to examine their own role in these sort of massive historical crises, and what are we doing or not doing,” she says.

4.1 Miles has been nominated for an Oscar and honored with a Student Academy Award. The film was also part of the official selection at IDFA and the Telluride Film Festival, and won the IDA Student Documentary Award. A version of her thesis film can be viewed on the New York Times Op-Docs, here.

By Rosa Furneaux