How The Film Was Made

 
Rachel Boynton got the idea for the film in the fall of 2001. She was 27 years old when she began and had spent five years working as a producer on independent documentaries. Our Brand Is Crisis is her first film as a director.

Boynton started by writing letters to consultants and setting up informational interviews. Soon she heard through the grapevine that a candidate named Gonzalo (“Goni”) Sanchez de Lozada was planning to run for President of Bolivia, and that he was shopping for a team of American consultants. She was introduced to him through his former American advisors, the ones who had crafted his successful campaign in 1993.

By the end of January 2002, she had official permission to begin shooting. In February she went on her first scouting trip to La Paz. She returned to the United States and organized her first shoot in four days. Boynton was back in Bolivia less than a week after her first trip, with an American cameraman. For the majority of the shoots she recorded sound herself. For the next five months, Boynton flew back and forth between Bolivia, Washington, D.C. and her home in New York City. She worked as a bartender on the side to save production money. Ultimately she shot about 165 hours of material.

Originally Boynton had planned to film three campaigns led by U.S. consultants in three countries and to construct parallel narratives. But events in Bolivia quickly took a dramatic and surprising turn. It became clear that this would be much more than a story about political campaigns, as the consultants, the candidate and the filmmaker were confronted with a disaster the first polls never predicted.
 

• Return to the Our Brand Is Crisis film info page.