ALISON ROWAT

SHE is the most famous teenager in the world, but her standing is not due to YouTube videos, being the daughter of rich, prominent parents, or other features of the celebrity age.

On 9 October, 2012, Malala Yousafzai, 15-years-old and living in the Swat valley in North-West Pakistan, was shot in the head by the Taliban for speaking out in favour of education for girls. As a new documentary shows, she is both an ordinary and extraordinary young woman, one who has both a Nobel Peace Prize to her name and a talent for teasing her younger brothers that sends them into fits of giggles.

He Named Me Malala is directed by Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar-winning helmer of An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore, climate change documentary of 2006. There was a short film made about Malala before for the New York Times website, but He Named Me Malala is the first feature length documentary to tell the now 18-year-old’s story from before the shooting to the present day.

Guggenheim had unprecedented access to the Yousafzai family. Over the course of 18 months, the California-based director of Waiting for ‘Superman’ travelled the world with Malala and her father Ziauddin, taking in locations including Birmingham, UK, where the family now lives, Jordan, Kenya, Nigeria, and the US.

The obviously easy relationship between director and subject was helped by the fact he has two daughters, aged 14 and 9, and a son who is 17. Even so, Guggenheim, whose father was the noted documentary maker Charles Guggenheim, found a particular way of working came in handy.

“The last few movies I’ve changed my technique radically,” he says. Before, he would start filming with lights and cameras, the full works, only to find the mood in the room changing from the relaxed chats beforehand. He noticed it particularly with Al Gore, the former US vice-president.

“He was very human and personal when we were alone without the cameras then when they brought the cameras he started to perform. So I started with him at the end of the movie to do these sound only interviews where it is just me and him. With Malala and Zia I started that way. I came to their house with just a microphone and a sound recordist and we would just sit in a room and talk for hours.”

Though the two were used to being interviewed, the relaxed atmosphere led to them saying things they had not told each other, says Guggenheim. The interviews are “the heart and soul of the movie” he adds. Crucially, they overlay the telling of Malala’s story through animated scenes.

The use of animation was born out of necessity. Guggenheim had the words on tape, including the story behind Malala’s name (she was called after an Afghani Pashtun female warrior), but not the images to accompany them. He used some news footage to show the context of the shooting, much of it never seen before, but such material was often unsuitable because its violent nature was at odds with what Malala was saying. Guggenheim had used animation before and decided to go for it, with Abu Dhabi-based Image Nation, which funded the film, backing the decision. Allied to the animation was footage shot at the family home in Birmingham.

“It was a financial risk but also a creative risk, because I didn’t know until I tried it whether you could inter-cut between these poetic, hand drawn images with her in real life in Birmingham.”

Guggenheim did not really know what to expect when entering a Muslim home. What struck him was the atmosphere in the house, and the attitudes of the family towards those who had almost taken Malala’s life.

“What a joyous family, what an irreverent, silly family. They tease each other, they fight in a very good natured way. Then they are also very forgiving. I can say this without hesitation. I’ve never seen an ounce of bitterness from them. I live in Los Angeles where people complain at Starbucks if their cappuccino is not hot enough and this family has been through so much. They live in exile, they’ve been taken from their country, Malala has suffered injuries that she still suffers from. I’ve never seen them complain. Not once…. which I find really quite inspiring.”

I ask how important it was to show this globally recognised campaigner as someone who was also just an ordinary teenager.

“It was something I thought would be good to do but it was also not hard. She does have this incredible two sides to her. I’ve been with her when she is writing her speeches. I was with her when she was practising her speech to the UN and writing her speech for the Nobel. At the same time I’d see her teasing her brothers, or going on the computer and looking up her favourite athletes. She is both those people in a very genuine way.”

Guggenheim, 51, started his career in television, directing episodes of shows including NYPD Blue, ER, and 24. He kept clear of documentaries for fear of comparisons with his triple Oscar-winning father, helmer of A Time for Justice, The Johnstown Flood, and Robert Kennedy Remembered.

“I felt that I could never match my father’s success, that the form had died and I’d missed my chance, I might as well just move to Hollywood and become a Hollywood director. That was my plan. And of course the best way to make God laugh is to tell him your plans.”

Eventually, the time spent with his father while a boy, watching him work, pulled Guggenheim towards documentary. The Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth proved it was the right move.

“When we made the movie no-one knew it would have the kind of reception that it did. Many of the people who worked on the film thought we’ll make some DVDs and give them to science teachers. Who would go see a movie about a slideshow? It certainly opened the doors for me, not just in terms of more work but also getting excited by the idea that you can tell a good story that also has some positive impact on the world.”

We return to his latest subject, and I ask what he sees in her future.

“I think she can do anything. There’s an expression careful when you meet your heroes because the more you get to know them the more they disappoint you. The more I know Malala the more awe I have for her as a human being. She’s obviously very smart. But she has a steely determination and a kind of wisdom that is beyond her years. She feels like she has been given a second chance in her life and she’s going to make the most of it.”

With her recovery not yet complete, Malala still has much to contend with. Guggenheim is convinced greater things lie ahead.

“She has a chance to really make a mark in this world. What you’ve seen is just the first few acts of her life.”

[itals] He Named Me Malala opens on November 6