‘Tiller’ Takes Audiences Into Abortion Doctors’ Offices, and Their Personal Lives
The film world loves hyperbolic terms such as “explosive material,” but that description is more than figurative for the Sundance Film Festival documentary “After Tiller.”
The bracing, 85-minute journey into the heart of the abortion debate is the only film among this year’s line-up to require its own retinue of arms guards, plus a full security check, during its Friday world premiere at Park City’s Temple theater.
It’s risk enough when the namesake of a film is Dr. George Tiller, the Kansas physician assassinated in 2009 during a service in his Wichita church. When the only four doctors performing late-term abortions in the United States show up at the world-premiere screening for a question-and-answer session with the audience, filmmakers don’t take any chances.
Directors Lana Wilson and Martha Shane, both 29, are first-time filmmakers who worked for nearly three years on the film. “We felt good about it (the security at the premiere),” Wilson said. “It meant we could exhale.”
Shane added: “The doctors are the best spokespeople for this issue, so of course they had to be there and be safe.”
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