We wanted to make an observational film about the adoption of a few kids into different American families and create a portrait of that incredible journey. It was a time when the AIDS crisis in Africa was a constant front-page story. Eight years ago my co-producer/director, Melanie Judd, and I went to Ethiopia to research a documentary about the adoption of Ethiopian kids by American families.

SM: The film we set out to make and the film we made are really different.

How did you get access to this story and find the subjects? NFS: Your latest film, Girl, Adopted, is a documentary that follows a 13-year-old Ethiopian girl named Weynsht for over four years as she is adopted by a family in Pyatt, Arkansas, of all places. It's always something new: new places, new people, new technology. You can never get bored making documentaries because each film is like a Master's Thesis in a new subject, and each phase of the film or show requires different skills. I think this is the work I'm most suited for, partly because it's always changing. I came up writing and researching and working as an assistant editor and as a production coordinator, basically doing whatever needed doing at any stage in the production, and I just got lucky. I worked for a great old-school documentarian, Robert Richter, back in the days when documentary filmmakers were called Producers, not Directors. When I graduated from college and moved to NY, I started working in documentaries. And there was something about that boundary between journalism and filmmaking that really captivated me. My dad and I used to watch public TV together: cooking shows and documentaries. SM: I loved documentaries since I was a kid. NFS: How did you become interested in producing to begin with? What’s your background?

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