Latest news with #Audrey'sChildren
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Audrey's Children' director Ami Canaan Mann beautifully crafts the story of 'the Mother of Neuroblastoma'
Award-winning director and writer Ami Canaan Mann has beautifully crafted a representation of the life of Dr. Audrey Evans, directing the film Audrey's Children. Starring Natalie Dormer, Jimmi Simpson and Clancy Brown, the story takes us to 1969 Philadelphia as Dr. Evans (Dormer), a pediatric oncologist, revolutionized treatment for children with neuroblastoma, becoming known as "the Mother of Neuroblastoma." The film was written by Julia Fisher Farbman, who knew Dr. Evans since she was a little girl, and Mann and the cast were able to meet the doctor, who died just two weeks before filming wrapped for Audrey's Children in 2022. She was 97 years old. Audrey's Children begins with Dr. Evans at the world-renowned Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where she became the hospital's first female chief of pediatric oncology. Dr. Evans comes to the department with new treatment ideas, initially too far fetched for her colleagues to understand, who are then quick to dismiss her. But Dr. Evans is determined to find the best treatment options for her young patients, while also providing care with kindness and compassion. Among her few allies is Dr. Dan D'Angio (Simpson), who would become her future husband. In terms of what interested Mann in taking on this project, there was one scene in particular that made her want to be involved. "The scene that really got me was, there's a scene on the roof where Dr. Evans talks to a little girl and tries to help her conceive of her own passing, and I thought, my God, that is not a position that any adult wants to be in, to be helping a child conceive of how they will no longer be on Earth," Mann told Yahoo Canada. "And here's a woman that did this daily and for decades, because she felt it was the right thing to do." Unlike the network TV medical dramas we see today, there's an appealing colour palette and visual language Mann uses for Audrey's Children, which not only helps to embed the audience in the era of the film, but invokes the feeling for reality and sincerity in the movie. "There are no primary colours in the movie, everything's sort of a deeply saturated, and there's a very judicious use of the colour red," Mann explained. "I really wanted to create an environment that felt viscerally, thoroughly authentic, and that the lighting felt that way, and the costuming felt that way." "The idea was that you could invite the audience in, sweep them along and at the end of the movie they, almost without realizing, have been told a story about kids with cancer." Having a keen eye as a director, Mann also used patterns as an effective motif throughout the film. "In one of the conversations I had with [Dr. Evans], which apparently she hadn't shared up to that point, she told me about having been a child in isolation with tuberculosis," Mann said. "I wanted to incorporate the idea of, here's a person who can see patterns in things, and that ability to see patterns as a child, and that focus away from loneliness, pain as a child, seeing patterns kind of translates later as an adult to [being] able to see patterns in what she's researching as well." As women, particularly when we watch movies and TV shows set in different decades, the portrayal of misogyny in society oftentimes feel insincere and ineffective. But Mann's approach to showing the sexism Dr. Evans faced as a successful doctor in a field largely occupied by men, in addition to elements in her personal life, like not being able to purchase a property without having a husband, was an integrated part of the story. "I really wanted ... the historical sexism to be the wallpaper in the room, not the contents of the room," Mann said. "It's not necessarily something that you can battle or fight, it's not something that's necessarily a thing that you can defeat. It is usually just the context that you're working in." "It's sometimes very quiet, ... but it's there nonetheless, and it affects people's choices and decisions, and the way they see each other. So the scene where she's in the conference room on her first day and she's the only woman in the room, that actually wasn't in the script. That was just a moment I was able to kind of just build on set, because I just felt like there's a lot of women, hopefully, that would be able to see that and identify and say, 'I've actually been in that situation. I know exactly what that feels like,' even if I wasn't able to name it or call it out." It's similar thinking when stressing in the film that Dr. Evans' romantic relationship with Dr. D'Angio as an "intellectual love story." "They needed to feel like intellectual equals," Mann said. "They need to feel like it was a man who could go toe-to-toe with her, without feeling like he was dominating her, and without feeling like he was being dominated by her, but yet be completely different in the way that they are approaching things." "You can see them falling in love in a way that isn't physicalized. They love the way each other ... talks and thinks, and that's what draws them to each other." With an interesting perspective as a director and writer, Mann is responsible for some particularly impactful TV episodes and movies, including episodes of Sneaky Pete and The Blacklist, and films Texas Killing Fields and Morning. But fans of the famed TV show Friday Night Lights will know that Mann directed one of the most memorable episodes of the whole series, Season 4, Episode 10 titled "I Can't." The episode where Becky makes the decision to have an abortion. It's a topic Mann wanted to present in a way that was "multifaceted" and centred around the "human perspective." "I felt really privileged to be able to do that episode. We shot it in five-and-a-half days, that's how short the shoot was," Mann shared. "I just have a lot of gratitude for being the one that was given that story to tell." "I wanted very much to try to present the issue of abortion and choice as personally as possible. ... We look at the statistics and we look at the numbers, and in the end and the beginning is a story about one person trying to make the choice that they feel is aligned with their life. And that's really, really, really hard to do." But both the Friday Night Lights episode and Audrey's Children, while more than a decade apart, exemplify Mann's commitment to trying to use her position as a writer and director to give people a voice, who may otherwise not have the opportunity. "I take seriously the idea of trying to help in any way possible to be a voice for people who may not otherwise have a voice. I take seriously the responsibility of being a storyteller and being a filmmaker, and being a director," Mann said. "There are a thousand places to put a camera in a room and where you decide to put the camera is informed by literally your point of view. Not only in terms of the point of view that you want to convey in the film itself, but your point of view as you're walking through the world. ... There's no such thing as an objective camera position, and everybody's going to choose to put it in a different place. So maybe it's possible to take opportunities with stories, to put the camera in a point of view that will show the subject matter's point of view in a way that people haven't seen before. And in that way, be of benefit and share stories that wouldn't otherwise be known." Audrey's Children opens in theatres starting March 28.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ami Canaan Mann on Directing Natalie Dormer as a Heroic Real-Life Doctor in ‘Audrey's Children' and What She Learned Watching Her Dad Direct ‘Heat'
'Audrey's Children' — in theaters Friday via Blue Harbor Entertainment — tells the true story of pediatric oncologist Dr. Audrey Evans (Natalie Dormer), who upended medicine with a new treatment of Neuroblastoma, an often-deadly childhood nerve cancer, all while standing up for herself in her field and caring for her young patients. With a script from Julia Fisher Farbman, the film is directed by Ami Canaan Mann, whose storytelling extends to many different genres in both features (the romantic drama 'Jackie & Ryan,' the crime story 'Texas Killing Fields') and television ('The Blacklist,' 'Power,' 'House of Cards'). Mann opens up about the documentary that influenced her style on 'Audrey's Children,' the role that inspired her to work with Dormer and what she learned working on the set of 'Heat' with her father, Michael Mann. I was sent the script, and there's a scene where the main character, Dr. Audrey Evans, is talking to one of her patients, a child at the hospital, and she's trying to help this child understand their own mortality as a mode of preparation. I thought to myself when I read that scene, 'My God, no adult wants to be in that position with a child, particularly a child whose life you're trying to save, and you're aware that you may fail.' I just thought it was such an egoless thing to do, and she did that as a pediatric physician daily, for decades. To me, that's real heroism and somebody whose story I would like to tell. More from Variety Blue Harbor Acquires U.S. Distribution Rights to Historical Biopic 'Audrey's Children' (EXCLUSIVE) Natalie Dormer, Assaad Bouab to Star in Celyn Jones Thriller Series 'Minotaur' (EXCLUSIVE) 'The Wasp' Review: Naomie Harris and Natalie Dormer Play Old Friends With Fresh Grievances I heard an interview with Peter Weir, who is a hero of mine, and he was talking about casting, and he was talking about how the idea is to discern the spirit of the character that you need in order to pull the narrative forward. Casting is really trying to figure out which actor can embody that and already has that spirit. Meryl Streep can do absolutely everything, and every one of her characters has an essential Meryl that she carries with her. For Audrey, I knew we needed somebody who had an emotional and intellectual passion and fire. At the same time … it sounds counterintuitive, but her spirit could also hold incredible softness and empathy with children. I saw the remake of 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' and there's a shot of Natalie and she has this power in her shoulders, and at another moment she turned very slowly to the camera. I was like, 'Oh, that's her.' Weirdly, my biggest reference might be Barbara Kopple's 'Harlan County, USA,' in the gritty realism, the textural symphony that she has in that film. It's a documentary, but it's a deep dive into a very specific world with incredibly human characters and a humane ethos towards the narrative overall. That's really what I was trying to go for in terms of the visual lexicon of this movie, that it was a textural world that felt like a real world. If it felt visually consistent because of the subject matter, it would be easy to go in a way that was a little bit too soft. If you can make the world visually consistent and compelling, perhaps the audience would want to stay with you through that hour and a half. That was the puzzle. That was the directorial challenge. Part of that was the visual language of film, making it seductive so that you wanted to be there. All of that was informed by it essentially being a character study. The criteria was anything that happened visually in terms of shot design, performance — I'm a pretty camera-heavy director because I come from a photography background — so all the composition, everything was coming from an awareness of the character herself, who just happened to be a woman who was pediatric oncologist, who happened to work with kids who had cancer. It was a story about a woman, a brilliant thinker, and watching how she moves in a flawed, and sometimes not flawed, way. It wasn't so much words of advice, because my dad and I just talk about dad-kid stuff. We actually don't talk about films a whole lot, and I knew I wanted to work with him on one movie from the beginning to the end. The timing worked out so that it happened to be 'Heat.' I didn't actually work for him, I worked for the line producer as an assistant. He had another assistant who did assistant-y stuff, so I was sort of the, 'Ami, go figure out the gyroscopic helicopter mount, now go figure out the infrared, coordinate with people in Folsom Prison so we can send Bob and Val to go there to interview inmates.' I eventually directed second unit. What that did, though, was allow a distance from the show, from the directorial heart of it, but just close enough to see everything. Watching an A director move from beginning to end through an entire project, and watching that project evolve and watch his approach to it evolve … not so close that I wasn't seeing everything I could see, but not so far away that I couldn't watch that trajectory. Watch the trailer for 'Audrey's Children' below. 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Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Audrey's Children: Local Charity Promotes Inspiring Biopic
HENDERSON, Ky. (WEHT) – The Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Ohio Valley invited me to an early screening of the inspiring new biopic Audrey's Children. Screening locally through April 2, Audrey's Children is an inspiring docudrama and biopic that charts the beginning of the Ronald McDonald House and the work of a pediatric oncologist during the late 1960s. Directed by Ami Canaan Mann, Audrey's Children stars Natalie Dormer as Dr. Audrey Evans, the first female Chief of Oncology at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The film begins with Dr. Evans's arrival, and it tells the story of her relationships with her colleagues and young patients. There are three main threads to Audrey's Children. First is her research into pediatric oncology. Dr. Evans catalogs and categorizes pediatric cancer, and the film depicts her work with her colleagues as important and revolutionary in its understanding of how cancer progresses and what new treatments are most effective. Many of the plotlines involve Dr. Evans attempting to get funding and data in her studies. And her treatment of pediatric cancer with multiple forms of chemotherapy both proves successful and runs her afoul with the hospital's administrators. The second plot thread is downplayed and not given as much attention: set in 1969, Dr. Evans contends with sexism and gender discrimination in the workplace. She is often the only woman in rooms of men making life-or-death decisions, and like many women will attest, she has to work twice as hard in order for her ideas to be taken seriously. Finally, Audrey's Children strums some heartbreaking chords in the scenes between Dr. Evans and her patients. Here is where Dormer's performance is particularly strong, as she has great chemistry with the child actors. Dr. Audrey ushers the young patients through scary procedures, and in some of the scenes, when the patients' prognoses seem the most dire, the film is the most affecting and emotional. Unlike many movies seeking to inspire, not all of Audrey's Children's charactershave a happy ending, and the film feels more realistic as a result. As she understands her patients' lives better and interacts with their parents, Dr. Evans comes up with the idea for the Ronald McDonald House, which of course connects to our local charities, as the Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Ohio Valley is mentioned in the film's closing credits. Audrey's Children demonstrates the need for the Ronald McDonald House, as we see families struggling to find housing and transportation while their children fight for their lives. Dormer delivers a moving monologue about the need for comprehensive care for not only the children, but their families as well. Overall, Audrey's Children is a moving and inspiring film about one woman's quest against an impersonal system and the children she saves – physically, medically, emotionally, and spiritually. It plays locally through April 2. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Forbes
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Philly-Based Biopic ‘Audrey's Children' Spotlights Unsung Hero Of Pediatric Cancer Treatment
For over a century, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (better known by its acronym CHOP) has been at the forefront of revolutionary medical breakthroughs aimed at saving and improving the lives of young people. Those hundred years are full of incredible true stories and larger-than-life personalities. Personalities like British oncologist Audrey Evans, whose campaign to develop a novel treatment for children suffering from neuroblastoma in the late 1960s takes center stage in the inspiring and tear-jerking medical drama, Audrey's Children (now playing in theaters everywhere). Evans, who continued to work well into her 80s before retiring, not only created a successful staging system that is still used to this day, but she also proved instrumental in the founding of the Ronald McDonald House charity, which provides free housing to families seeking treatment far away from home. Producer/screenwriter Julia Fisher Farbman was inspired to craft a biopic around Dr. Evans (portrayed in the movie by Game of Thrones actress Natalie Dormer) after profiling the oncologist on Modern Hero, a series about women with extraordinary careers and influence. 'It was really the comments and shares of people whose life stories Audrey impacted,' Farbman recalls. 'They're alive because of her, went to medical school, stayed at a Ronald McDonald House … I just felt this overwhelming feeling that I was supposed to tell her story on film. So here we are, seven years later.' The scriptwriting process took around two year of intense research involving innumerable conversations with Dr. Evans (prior to her death in 2022 at the age of 97), other physicians, and families impacted by pediatric cancer. 'I approached the story with a lot of listening and trying to understand," Farbman explains. 'Trying to make sure we were being authentic to those people and not sugar coating their realities.' In addition, CHOP provided her access to a treasure trove of archival material comprising 'hundreds of documents." All of it greatly appealed to the producer/writer's journalistic background. 'When you do a true story, you have to put together a script annotation where you cite all your sources. I'm very proud of that important attention to detail, facts, and the truth. Otherwise, you lose the audience.' Audrey's Children director Ami Canaan Mann shared that commitment to detail, making the most of the film's modest budget (all of it raised independently by Farbman) to resurrect Philadelphia, circa 1969, without the use of any fabricated sets or extensive CG augmentation. 'Nobody necessarily wants to hear about kids with cancer for an hour-and-a-half,' the filmmaker says. 'But if you can seduce them into the world and do that through attention to detail and consistency of vision in terms of the visual aspects of the film, then at the end of an hour-and-a-half, it turns out that they have heard a story about kids with cancer.' The second core pillar of the biopic was being as true to the medical science as possible. As a result, the shoot made use of real nurses as background extras, as well as an on-set doctor consultant. 'I didn't want anybody who works in the medical profession to look at this movie and be like, 'Oh no, they didn't get the holding of the syringe right!'' Mann admits. They were ultimately successful on that front, with CHOP's oncology department giving the film its seal of approval after an advance screening. 'The greatest compliments they could give us were not only did we bring Audrey back to life as they remembered her, but we also nailed the medical world,' Farbman says. "The holistic approach that Audrey took to caring for her patients is very much the holistic approach that we took to the film. It was not just what was in the script, it was not just about what it looked like — it was the whole thing.' As Evans, Dormer brilliantly commands the screen, portraying the character as a profoundly empathetic caregiver who won't allow anything — least of all the male-dominated culture of the time period — to get in the way of trailblazing medical research that could save countless lives. 'She was a force of nature,' emphasizes Mann. In one particularly notable scene, Audrey jumps into a swimming pool fully clothed just to grab the attention of her dismissive superior, C. Everett Koop (The Penguin's Clancy Brown, who is a dead ringer for the actual man), CHOP's head of pediatric surgery at the time and future Surgeon General of the United States. 'Exactly what you see onscreen is who Audrey Evans was,' Farbman says. 'She was tenacious and funny with a very dry sense of humor. [She was also] laser-focused on her mission. If I could sum up Audrey, it's that she believed she was put here by God with a purpose to care for children and literally nothing got in her way, ever." To prepare for the titular role, Dormer had a number of conversations with the real Audrey and studied the doctor's voice and mannerisms ad nauseam. 'Before any scene, Natalie would listen to a recording, just to make sure she had [the accent down pat] 'Natalie was Audrey,' echoes Farbman. 'She brought her back to life.' Despite pushback on funding and resources from her superiors, Audrey gains a vital ally in Dr. Giulio John D'Angio (Westworld's Jimmi Simpson), whom she ended up marrying later in life. 'It's a very interesting love story, in that it's not a physicalized love story,' notes Mann. 'It's a love story about two people who fall in love with each other's intellect. She's such a force of nature, that you needed to have a male counterpart who could go toe-to-toe with her; someone who could be empathic towards and understand her, but not feel dominating or passive. There had to be a real balance. So it had to be somebody like Natalie, and it had to be somebody like Jimmi.' She continues: 'We went to CHOP with a lot with the actors and talked to people who worked with [Audrey] and knew her. We had the good fortune of being able to go to some of the labs where they're now doing bespoke cancer treatments. They're taking your particular cancer and designing treatments specifically to that cancer. It's just incredible. Then I turned my head and caught it, a picture of Dan and Audrey. They're very much the grandparents of that kind of continuation of research.' Even after retiring from the medical field in 2009, Dr. Evans never her joie de vivre. Farbman knows that better than anyone, having 'spent hundreds of hours together" with the oncologist. 'Just being around her and seeing how she lived her life was a beautiful experience,' the producer/writer concludes. 'She would stop and talk to other people's babies, she would give money to homeless people, she would stop and say hello to people just to make their day better. Seeing everything she had to overcome and how she was still that way in her 97th year on Earth, feeling like she still had work to do, [believing] Audrey's Children is now playing in theaters nationwide. Ben Chase, Julianne Layne, and Evelyn Giovine co-star. Click here for tickets!
CBS News
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
"Audrey's Children" spotlights Philadelphia doctor who changed medicine, founded Ronald McDonald House Charities
A movie about a legendary pediatric doctor in Philadelphia will be in theaters nationwide Friday. Set in Philadelphia in 1969, the movie " Audrey's Children " is the true story of Dr. Audrey Evans, a doctor at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who changed the face of medicine. Evans' work led to cancer breakthroughs for children. She also stood up against sexism and other roadblocks. "I spent really years at her side," said Dr. Yael Mossé, an oncologist at CHOP who worked with Evans. "She's really a trailblazer and serves as such a role model for generations of pediatric oncologists," Mossé said. Evans also co-founded the first Ronald McDonald House , believing that taking care of sick children involved the whole family. "For me, it's about the power of the individual," said actress Natalie Dormer, who plays Evans in the movie. She said it's a "once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-career opportunity." Jimmi Simpson plays her husband. The movie production started before Evans died in 2022 at 97 years old, forever leaving her mark on medicine and on millions of families.
