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Award-winning documentary filmmaker, writer, and presenter, Alex Bescoby, has a love of history, travel, and storytelling. He co-founded independent production company ‘Grammar Productions’ to make innovative documentaries that delve deeper into history and how it affects the lives of people and societies around the world today. In 2013, he began work on his debut documentary, ‘We Were Kings’. Telling the incredible true story of Burma’s lost royal family, filmed through three seismic years in Burma’s history, it premiered at the British Library in 2017 and has since been broadcasted worldwide. Inspired by Sir David Attenborough’s iconic First Overland expedition, he completed and documented his own expedition – ‘The Last Overland’, crossing 23 countries in 111 days in a very badly behaved old Land Rover – which has been his greatest adventure to date.
In this episode of The Internationalist, host Julio Bruno sits down with Alex Bescoby to discuss the incredible story of Burma’s lost royal family, as well as his upcoming project, ‘The Last Overland’. Alex explains how an email calling for people to study Burmese and Thai history abroad led him to become an “accidental filmmaker” and describes the modern history of Myanmar and the 1989 democratic movement that initiated the name change. Then, Alex delves into his documentary and reveals how behind-the-scenes, unexpected events have changed the whole project, what – in the end – made it even a deeper and greater experience. Finally, he concludes by explaining how he treated the business model of filmmaking as an experiment, which ultimately led him to become a filmmaker, and tells why the fact that it was transforming gave him more room for creativity.
Created & produced by: Podcast Partners
Published: Sep 15, 2022
