GALO: Four Women, One World sounds really interesting. When is that going to be ready for people to view?

JC: That is just about done and we’re probably looking at the spring when we’re going to start sending it out to film festivals and we’ll figure out the plan [from there]. We’ve been fortunately very busy with Facing Fear, and again, there’s been such a strong and good reaction to it — which I’ve been pleased about — so we’re sort of busy trying to get this out, and then we’ll kind of jump to the other one when we can breathe a little bit.

GALO: Boger was faced not by the version of the man who tried to kill him, but by a man who had renounced his old way of life — leaving Boger with the unfathomable undertaking of trying to find a way to absolve his would-be killer in order to move on from his ordeal. What interests you most about these stories of forgiveness, and what about them motivates you to share them through film? In what way has working on this documentary helped you with your understanding of the theme of forgiveness in relation to the bigger film project you’re working on?

JC: I think for me, one of the interesting things is that when you talk about forgiveness there’s going to be a victim and a perpetrator, whether that’s a horrific attack like we talk about in our film or whether it’s something a little less drastic. If it’s an argument, there’s always somebody on either side of the equation. I think, in general, people often tend to sympathize with the victim, which is fairly common and I don’t have a problem with that, but part of this was examining how Tim (the perpetrator) had a lot to deal with himself in getting to a point of being comfortable with Matthew forgiving him. Tim talks a lot in the film about forgiving himself for his actions and going through his own internal struggle of trying to forgive this past life that he had now escaped. So, for me, it was interesting to really explore the whole picture and not just look at Matthew as the victim who had to forgive the perpetrator, but to really look at the whole picture — at what both of them are going through and relate it to each other.

A lot of people have asked me if I’ve changed and changed my perception on forgiveness. I think it certainly changed how I look at things; any little thing that comes up in my life, whether it be a small argument or scolding my son, I certainly look at it differently and think about it a bit more — about whether I need to come back and look at forgiveness in a different way, whether it be a little petty thing or obviously something more drastic.

You know, everyone has also asked me, would I have been able to forgive Tim? My response has always been that I have really no idea. Part of the reason why we made the film is to show that it’s personal. Until I’ve walked in Matthew’s shoes and been through what he’s been through his whole life, and then been through the incident and everything after, there’s no way I could flatly just say, “Yes, I would be able to forgive Tim.” I really don’t know.

With the film, we were not trying to necessarily advocate for forgiveness as the right answer. We wanted to present the story of forgiveness for people to see and to let them decide, to take it back and apply it in their own lives and see it as something that would work for them or not. We are certainly not saying it is the right answer for everybody, because I’m sure for some people, it’s not — and some people just cannot get to that point, particularly when you start talking about horrific acts like murder. We definitely just want people to see it and take it in, but we are certainly not here to tell people to change their thinking one way or the other.

GALO: I think a lot of people fear what they don’t understand, and have a primal gut reaction instead of trying to actively comprehend a different perspective. Before watching the documentary, I assumed the title Facing Fear was simply in reference to Boger facing the man who tried to kill him after all these years. It is, in part, about that — but can you talk about the different types of fears that Zaal and Boger had to overcome in order to reach an understanding?

JC: We did work on a few iterations of the title, but then we landed on this one. I mean you’ve hit it on the head, it was [meant] to hit on all the fear that both of them were facing in their lives and through this process that they were going through. Of course, there was the attack and Matthew facing this man who had almost taken his life. But then there was the fear of trying to forgive him and going through that process and having Tim in his life, not necessarily as a figure who is going to attack him again but just emotionally — Matthew had buried this incident for over 25 years.

And for Tim, he was really dealing with a lot of things in his life that he had not fully confronted, even though he had extricated himself from the white power movement, which was a very difficult thing for him to do. When this happened, it really brought things back to the surface for him. So when Matthew came back into his life, he then had to confront things that he had put away for a while that kind of bubbled up again, where he really had to reexamine himself. I think that Tim’s big thing was facing this fear of forgiving himself and acknowledging what he had done from his own perspective, just behind even Matthew forgiving him.

(Interview continued on next page)