CR 057: Director-Producer Joe Hill on War, Filmmaking, and Art as an Act of Resistance

The Emmy Award-winning documentarian discusses his latest film, “Match in a Haystack.”

Photo courtesy of Joe Hill

During his six years at VICE News, five-time Emmy Award-winner Joe Hill produced dozens of documentaries—often putting himself at risk to tell heart-wrenching stories of war, famine, and displacement—for HBO, Showtime, and other partners. But along the way, he began to wonder if there might be more uplifting ways to engage audiences.

“I have these core values as a journalist,” Hill says. “And with VICE News, I felt strongly that we were creating this historical record of very profound and influential moments of history and trying to center the feeling of being alive as part of the historical record. But I was overwhelmed by the sense that we were only creating this historical record of the act of destruction and death and suffering. I’d filmed such horrific things. I’d filmed famine, I’d filmed refugee crises and bombardments. And I started to will myself to believe that there was history that wasn’t just death and destruction. That there’s also something else…