By Bill Goodykoontz | Arizona Republic
CNN Films and Time Studios are making a documentary about Gabrielle Giffords.
The film, titled “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down,” is directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, who made “RBG” and “Julia,” well-received documentaries about the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the late chef Julia Child.
Giffords, a former Arizona congresswoman, was injured in a shooting in Tucson in 2011 that killed six people and injured 13 others.
CNN described the Giffords film as “a tender yet raw documentary about … Giffords’ remarkable perseverance following a horrific 2011 assassination attempt that left her with partial paralysis and the language impairment, aphasia.”
The film about Giffords will include footage from the hospital
The film sounds intriguing, as it will include “home movies taken at the hospital,” according to the statement, in addition to interviews and other footage. The film also follows “a remarkable love story” between Giffords and Mark Kelly, the former astronaut who successfully ran for the U.S. Senate from Arizona in 2020.
“Within minutes of meeting Gabby Giffords, we knew we had to make a film about this phenomenal woman,” Cohen and West said in a statement. “The intelligence, humor and toughness she brings to every personal and political challenge that comes her way makes Gabby not only an ideal documentary subject, but also a spectacular human being to spend time with.”
The documentary will include new interviews with Barack Obama, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, as well as Giffords’ surgeon, her speech pathologists and her mother, along with other survivors of the shooting.
