00:15:01.580Vanessa, I don't even know where to begin, and I'm a little emotional right now.
00:15:06.940If you can excuse me, every time I see footage of the Freedom Convoy,
00:15:12.940especially now, having met some of the people who were involved in it,
00:15:18.600So I get a little bit worked up, so I'll get past it in the next couple of seconds.
00:15:25.720This film, you said backstage before we went live tonight that it was a two-year project.
00:15:35.280When did you decide that you wanted to do this film, first of all, and then why?
00:15:42.100Well, I think it was around, it had been bothering me for a good year. Finally, in 2021, I started thinking about it. I started writing up a proposal.
00:15:57.640And it was very, very hard because I tend to make films that are essay films. So it's not about following a process.
00:16:06.540it's about it's I asked myself the question what's going on I mean this is this is with
00:16:16.140every film I ask myself the question if I'm interested in a subject what does the public
00:16:21.560need to know what does the public what doesn't the public know that they should know about this
00:16:28.320issue and that's where I start and then it was a question of what are the major themes going to be
00:16:35.920of this film. And that changed as the whole COVID experience changed. Well, what I decided
00:16:45.340to do was, against my good judgment, it was a very, very intense two years. As I mentioned
00:16:58.200to you backstage i'm not a i'm not a um a superstitious person but this film had a black
00:17:07.520cloud of curses every single day it was just brutal and i i tend to i'm not a filmmaker that
00:17:16.680slaps up something onto the onto the internet i tend to work with very big broadcasters
00:17:22.980established broadcasters i'm uh i'm an independent right and so when i when i think of a concept i
00:17:30.840start talking to people i put together a a good uh creative team people that i think can execute
00:17:37.940the concept with me and uh and then we write something up we shoot a trailer and we start
00:17:45.520to go to broadcasters and funders vanessa that's what i was about to ask i mean you have i'm not
00:17:52.260going to sit here and say that you've been a mainstream filmmaker your entire life. You have
00:17:57.040done some, uh, some very interesting things. Um, you've worked with sting though. You've worked
00:21:19.140And that's exactly what my film was about
00:21:21.400because I thought, I don't want to be accused
00:21:25.740in this film of taking a side, because that is deadly for any filmmaker. People can accuse you
00:21:35.480of taking one side, you're not being journalistically proper, you should be telling the
00:21:43.860other side also. So the way I got around it is, if I deal with the suppression of science during
00:21:50.980the time of COVID, and I look at two key storylines, if I look at the storyline of lockdowns,
00:21:57.800how did we actually lock down? What was the science behind it? How were the decisions made
00:22:05.080to lock down? Plus, and the second storyline was the mystery around the origin of the virus,
00:22:16.400That is, the lab leak theory. Why were institutions, why was Tony Fauci trying to shut down the entire lab leak theory?
00:22:26.700If we told the story through the voices of these dissenting scientists and what happened to them, and corroborate that testimony, then the film will make sense to the movable middle, and that is the reasonable left of center to the reasonable right of center.
00:22:48.800People that can have a dialogue with each other.
00:25:34.260those people were pilloried right from the very top they were pilloried not only by their own
00:25:41.020institutions but by the head of the national institutes of health francis collins they were
00:25:48.080pilloried by tony fauci as you will see in our film and the media did a devastating takedown of
00:25:56.340And so what is important in the film is that it's not that we had secret access to these documents, but when Elon Musk took over Twitter, he appointed a number of crack journalists to curate some of the emails, some of the secret emails between important parties,
00:26:24.340parties such as Tony Fauci, Francis Collins, and that whole group of public policy people around
00:26:32.140Fauci. And we can see through these emails was that there was a collusion to shut these people
00:26:38.500down. And not only that, we know that the Biden government colluded with Twitter and with Facebook
00:26:48.820to shut down dissenting opinions people who either opposed the lockdowns or they were questioning
00:26:57.500whether uh the virus had escaped from uh from a lab right let me ask you
00:27:05.100my i've got this instinct that always makes me ask why right and when i get the answer to the
00:27:13.680question I've asked then I ask why again and so if if we have discovered and we've put it on film
00:27:20.760that and we know this that Dr. Fauci and Francis Collins and these guys and Biden government we
00:27:27.920know they colluded to shut down these doctors Jay Bhattacharya and the rest that you mentioned
00:27:33.920Scott Atlas why would they do that what was their rationale behind this do you dig that deep into
00:27:40.360this film yes yes and what what we do is we look at early 2000 we look at 2019 we look at
00:27:50.860uh the fact that china knew that the virus had been circulating
00:27:56.180china we we we know that china uh got rid of of scientists who were who were um who were rather
00:28:06.880vocal that there was a that there was a dangerous virus out there yeah um so there was
00:28:14.280we we're not linear about it we show the influences we show that the who uh wanted to
00:28:24.020wanted to take china's lead and what china did immediately was shut down they shut down wuhan0.55
00:28:30.380And they shut it down for a month, and then they said to the world, and of course they lied. This is something that China does. They lie.0.96
00:28:43.820Some of our media can't get their head around that because our media, especially mainstream media, wants to think the best of China. But it's quite clear that China is not our friend.0.57
00:28:59.260So they shut down and then they told the entire world, they said, look, a month in, we beat this virus.
00:30:59.520If the film is political in any way or reflects in any way on China,
00:31:04.860we know that China has tremendous influence in Hollywood.
00:31:08.980In terms of our media, I mean, I don't think China really.
00:31:12.440I mean, China is interested in intellectual property.0.98
00:31:18.760They're interested in stealing intellectual property.0.84
00:31:23.320I think it's more that liberal governments tend to, I mean, especially our government has been very friendly about China.
00:31:36.980And he's even come out and said, Mr. Trudeau has even come out and said that he admires the Chinese Communist Party because, quote, they can get things done.
00:31:47.620Well, yes, of course they can get things done.0.78
00:31:50.320Their basic dictatorship allows them to turn their economy around on a dime and go greenest, fastest, even though their emissions have been going through the roof for the past five years, if that really mattered.0.79
00:32:01.940But what we do say in the film, and this is very important, and this is China's disproportionate influence on the WHO. If China locked down, there's pressure on the WHO to say, well, world, we should be locking down. Look at how successful China has been.0.75
00:32:20.040But this doesn't explain why the major U.S. media, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, why they all fell for China's ruse.0.56
00:32:32.520And there were these headlines saying China's got this right.
00:32:37.880They shut down what's happening to us.0.97
00:33:45.500So the head modeler puts out this chart, and he puts out the chart that shows that in the U.S. alone, within several months, two million people were going to die if we didn't shut down.
00:34:01.240Well, the actual numbers were actually a tiny fraction.
00:34:05.760So the miscalculation was not just a little off, but it was out in outer space wrong. It was hugely wrong. And the chief modeler, Neil Ferguson, who admitted that they had made a huge blunder, said, well, he said, I didn't expect that governments would base their health policies on this.
00:34:35.760are you talking about which begs the question which begs the question and this comes out in
00:34:41.420the film and it's stated by a number of experts it begs the question who are these experts we're
00:34:48.520relying on experts if the experts don't know what they're doing where do we go where do we go for
00:34:54.760accurate data where does the average person then who does the average person turn to where do we
00:35:01.900go for the truth for the truth exactly exactly and so there were this there was this confluence of
00:35:09.400these of these factors that all of a sudden and and then you know uh
00:35:16.660does the film get into the societal abuses that happened to people who chose not to vaccinate or
00:35:25.040chose to not no actually uh vaccines are a whole other nest of vipers of a film part two yeah
00:35:35.360that's a whole other film i won't survive part two
00:35:39.100no what we focus on it we really look at how was science shut down and and so when when we look at
00:35:49.740the lab leak theory, we asked the question, why was there so much effort into covering up that
00:35:57.740this could have leaked from the Wuhan lab? So we do know, again, this is through Slack messages.
00:36:05.260This is through freedom of information access. This is through the Senate hearings that have
00:36:12.400been going on in Washington, where a lot of these key scientists, including Fauci
00:36:16.860and Francis Collins were grilled in front of Congress
00:36:21.840and they had this huge hearing and it's still going on
00:36:55.900They couldn't go there because Anthony Fauci's institute had been funding the Chinese scientists in Wuhan.
00:37:04.560There had been a collaboration between American and Chinese scientists for many years on bat coronaviruses, and they were carrying on these experiments, these gain-of-function experiments, which mean, just in plain language, that if you have a relatively harmless pathogen, like a little coronavirus, you do experiments to make it more pathogenic.
00:37:32.960meaning harmful to humans why do you do that uh the but the benevolent reason is that if if there
00:37:43.400is any kind of a pandemic and this and this virus does is is transmitted somehow to human beings0.99
00:37:52.660then you have a vaccine ready that's one of the stupidest you want to know what i've i'm glad you0.98
00:37:59.920explain that to me because i mean how would a virus that is engineered um and i heard a chinese0.99
00:38:06.400scientist talk about it this is on tucker carlson about three years ago when he was still on fox
00:38:11.080news this chinese chinese scientist who was on the run talk about the coronavirus being kind of like
00:38:16.280a mishmash of a pig's tail a chicken's foot the wings of an eagle the face of a cow like it's all
00:38:23.540mashed together from all of these different viruses and there's no way there's no chance
00:38:27.920that a virus like that could ever appear naturally so it's about a weapon obviously
00:38:34.800yeah i mean we don't we don't speculate on that in the film because we've got to be very careful
00:38:40.940we just we can only tell what the facts are who said what to whom and right and and we and we lay
00:38:48.100it out there for the for the audience but we do know that this gain of function these gain of
00:38:56.340experiments had been banned under the Obama administration. We know this procedure was
00:39:07.960banned because it was considered too dangerous. But the scientists under Fauci found some kind
00:39:16.720of a loophole and they went kind of back to it rather quietly. And we do know that it had been
00:39:23.420going on for quite a while and we do know that the FBI had been worried for many years that
00:39:30.400something was going to leak from this lab. And we know this because one of the people in the UK
00:39:38.140who kind of parceled out this money, Peter Daszak, who took the money from the US and parceled it
00:39:44.840out to these Chinese scientists and he asked the NIH for insurance money to guard against a leak
00:39:54.560back in 2018. He was turned down but we actually know this. We also so the FBI knew why were they
00:40:06.100frightened of a leak because the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a level four biohazardous lab that
00:40:13.400is the most dangerous lab and you better be walking around in a hazmat suit in there
00:40:20.320but they regularly operated at a level two which is like your dentist your dental office1.00
00:40:28.740because well you know that's how china rolls they're not exactly um that interested in human1.00
00:40:36.840safety well apparently they're still a third world country and that's why we give them money0.92
00:40:41.340every year millions hundreds of millions as a matter of fact even though they have the second
00:40:45.340largest economy in the world i mean that's absolutely crazy uh let me ask you through
00:40:50.280the process of making this film vanessa for the past couple of years did you learn things
00:40:55.340that you didn't know before and when you did how did you feel after learning them
00:41:01.640i thought how can i make this film so we can show this how can i make this film so that we can put
00:41:09.480this piece of information in there the film is a an hour 15 minutes which is about what an audience
00:41:15.000can can stand it's information heavy but there were many things we just couldn't put in in this
00:41:21.760film we just couldn't put in because there was they were details that were very very interesting
00:41:28.460but we just couldn't stick them in because uh threat of lawsuit or not so much lawsuits but
00:41:36.940simply because there's just not enough room and and when you make a film you have to lay it out
00:41:43.180like a lesson plan you've got to you've got to keep going you have to go from logic to logic
00:41:52.620to logic you've got you've got to lead your audience and you've got to make sure that they
00:41:58.140understand what you're saying and it's the film is jam-packed but for example we knew and this again
00:42:06.720And we did put this tidbit in the film that there was a Chinese scientist in his 50s that the Chinese government suspected he had actually leaked COVID from the lab.
00:42:24.640Apparently, he was one of China's top scientists.
00:42:27.620He was in his 50s, and apparently he was pushed from the top of the Wuhan lab.0.91
00:42:33.040so they somebody somebody did away with him they disappeared him yeah that's what they do in china
00:42:41.120they disappear you're in the back the trunk of a car and gone but shadow here's what's interesting
00:42:48.200this scientist had a vaccine for covet 19 back in 2019 how on earth would you have a oh wait
00:42:59.120do you put that in the film please tell me yes but you don't you don't elaborate on it you just
00:43:08.640say that this guy had a vaccine for covet 19 in 2019 and then leave it like that no what we do
00:43:18.480is we should we we show that there is a headline that there's a uk headline this scientist is you
00:43:25.780know was thrown off the the the roof of uh you know of the wuhan institute and we have an
00:43:32.640investigative journalist tell us this story so the investigative journalist paul thacker
00:43:37.680is like he's one of these crack journalists that deals only in the corruption of science
00:43:44.000and he's he's he's worked for the he's worked for the u.s senate he's been a a professor at harvard
00:43:52.520he knows his way around the corruption of big pharma and he knows where all of the bodies are
00:43:58.640are buried and he was the one during the interview he was he was the one that that told us this story
00:44:07.100and so we had to find a headline somewhere that kind of uh that that showed that um that the that
00:44:16.720that it was already in the in the media somewhere i would like to get paul thacker on this show
00:44:22.820if he knows where all the bodies are buried uh if you know he if he ever shows his face in public
00:44:28.060i'm sure the guy travels incognito with the security team maybe lives in a basement under
00:44:33.780a rock somewhere i mean if he if he has all this information you know they're out to get him
00:44:38.960it's funny vanessa how many people i've had on this show who speak um from places they'd rather
00:44:45.020not reveal because they have yeah they have so much interesting information they they don't want
00:44:51.920anybody to know where they are it's crazy in what style is is this film made is it interview style
00:44:58.940are you talking to these people or is it just a one person storytelling kind of a thing it's it's
00:45:05.860a one it's we don't have a narrator so we we let the key people in the whole covet drama whether
00:45:13.480it's Jay, whether it's Scott Atlas, we let these, Dr. Paul Merrick, who talks about ivermectin
00:45:23.880and who talks about ventilators and what a catastrophe that they were, we let each doctor
00:45:31.900tell their story. In the meantime, it's a rather cinematic experience. So it's really well shot
00:45:41.960And we have tremendous archive in the film, which is why we needed some good lawyers, because we couldn't afford to pay for the archives.
00:45:51.800We did this on a shoestring budget, and it was really the kind of film that should have had the resources of an entire news team, a newsroom.
00:46:03.200So our lawyers cleared us for a lot of the archives and also cleared us for any kind of potential libel.
00:46:14.280And so, you know, some of the people in our films said some pretty inflammatory things.
00:46:20.480And as I listened to them say these inflammatory things, I was editing in my mind saying, whoops.
00:46:28.140Can't say that. That's got to go. That's got to go.
00:55:43.180Here's what the public needs to know. And then you and you start from a skeleton script and you build on that and you and you have you have to find a crack visual researcher who can find who knows, again, whose job it is to find all of these archives, all of the news archives, all of the other interviews, all of the pieces that we that we used in this film.
00:56:17.520In terms of the making of the film, what was extremely difficult on this project was that, to put it bluntly, people in my industry did not want to work on it.
00:56:29.920They were either frightened, they were appalled, or they just said, I don't agree with this.
00:56:37.540i just as i couldn't even find a business affairs person to work on the film until i found someone
00:56:46.700who was semi-retired who knew me and she and she took it on but we had people i had someone
00:56:53.720basically treat the film as if it was voodoo and even as late as a few weeks ago when we were
00:58:28.240Because we know it's being released soon and you're having a big release in Toronto.
00:58:32.660When can we, people are asking, Vanessa, when can we see this movie you worked so hard on for two years?
00:58:39.720So after our opening in Toronto, and I hope your viewers in the Toronto area and beyond will come out to the Isabel Bader Theatre on May 9th.
00:58:53.020It's on our website. You can get tickets on our website.
00:58:56.600It's going to be a big premiere because we have four fantastic speakers.
00:59:02.660on the panel so it's going to be a public engagement evening so it's going to be a big
00:59:07.520a big uh event you're not just going to see the film but you're going to see people commenting
00:59:12.320and you're going to have a q a with a live audience and the the information is on covidcollateral.com
00:59:18.160yeah yes and then the film itself and then we're going to have a few other screenings hopefully
00:59:22.460across canada and um and and then they can actually watch it on nt ntd a new tank dynasty
00:59:33.160tv and okay or they can actually catch it later on on my website vanessa have you uh had any
00:59:42.680pushback is you were mentioning that you were trying to get some western canadian screenings
00:59:47.200for this and are you having pushback from theater saying nope not doing it i guess you are i am
00:59:55.760screening in woke toronto if you can i mean if you you'll get the you'll get the irony shadow
01:00:01.500there's Toronto that's holding the screening but in Alberta and i felt sorry for the owner
01:00:08.420of the theater i i don't blame her but uh she she wrote a note to my um to my booking
01:00:15.820representative and she said to him basically we can't take this film and this is the owner
01:00:24.660of a big multiplex in calgary and she said that they had a lot of hate directed at her and at her
01:00:33.340staff because they had held a a town hall for uh the ucp party for danielle smith's party
01:00:42.800And I thought, how can this be? This is the ruling party of Alberta and they're not allowed to have a town hall. But she said there were advertisers who were threatening to poll their dollars.
01:01:00.600There were haters out there. There were people from different groups who were harassing the people at the theater.
01:01:20.220And she said she went through so much hate because of, I think, there were two incidents within a few months.
01:01:29.280And it had to do with them hosting, my understanding was, Danielle Smith's town hall.