A Brazilian and a Brit enter the White House. It’s not the start of a bar joke, but it’s a remarkable situation when you consider that the two walked in with cameras and had unprecedented access to the Trump family before and after the Capitol invasion in January 2021.” Unprecedented” (unprecedented, in free translation), the three-part documentary directed by Londoner Alex Holder and produced and edited by carioca Marcos Horácio Azevedo, has just premiered on the Discovery + streaming platform.
The project was under wraps for over a year, but a Politico scoop in June revealed not only the film’s existence but the fact that Alex Holder was subpoenaed by the committee investigating January 6. The committee requested and obtained all of the recordings made by the duo and interviewed Holder, whose team filmed and witnessed the invasion of the Capitol.
Holder and Azevedo passed through New York and spoke by phone with the Sheet. The two live in Los Angeles and were introduced after the director had already done a first interview with Trump, before the election. Regarding the subpoenaed delivery of the recordings, the director does not believe it is a negative precedent. “I was expecting it because I knew the committee was requesting images from everyone who was present on January 6. I don’t think it affects our integrity or independence because it’s a historic document,” explains Holder.
The director, who had started interviewing and accompanying Donald Trump and his 3 eldest children before the election, was already looking forward to the events of January 6th and planned the filming the day before. He blames Trump for the outburst of violence, because of the rhetoric and insistence on the stolen election lie.
“Unprecedented” was preceded by weeks of promotion, with the release of excerpts from the interviews, in a selection of clips that created suspense about the revelations obtained. Days after the Capitol riot, documentary filmmakers capture the moment then-Vice President Mike Pence reads on his cell phone the news that Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi asks him to remove Donald Trump from office, invoking a constitutional amendment. Mike Pence, unflappable, just says, “Excellent.”
In another scene, Ivanka Trump contradicts herself on what she said by testifying to the committee. In the movie, she says that her father must keep fighting to prove that she won the election. Under oath, she said that she had accepted her father’s defeat.
The intense early promotion of “Unprecedented” created an expectation of sensational revelations about the family that already lived in public before the birth of Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric Trump, the three children who followed their father in business and political life.
But the film does not reveal facts unknown in decades of books and investigative reporting on Donald Trump. The biggest surprise, says Holder, is the fact that they have had so much access to family, traveling on the presidential plane, following the campaign and recording with the former president at clubs in Florida and New Jersey.
Marcos Horácio Azevedo explains that, from the beginning, the intention was to let Donald, Donald Jr, Eric, Ivanka and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner speak without interruption.
As the family has been notorious for encounters with the law, because of irregular practices by the company, and the patriarch has set the record for lies told by an occupant of the White House, the Rio editor says the criterion was not to let patent untruths pass. As a counterpoint, the film uses interviews with well-known political journalists talking about the Trumps.
Alex Holder highlights interviews in which the three sons compete to be more subservient to their father. “It’s clear that what matters most to this family is the Trump brand, and losing the election is seen as damaging to the brand,” says the director.
The documentary filmmakers’ decision to approach the family without a point of view and let the audience decide was seen by some American critics as a waste of extraordinary opportunity. The unusual access was perhaps gained because the family did not see unfamiliar English as a threat and hoped for a flattering outcome on the “legacy” of the Trump presidency which they were certain would have a second term.
Regarding the mood he found among the Trumps after January 6, Holder says that the deterioration was real. “Trump was more angry, then depressed, and had gained weight when I met him in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.”
In the film, Trump is the only one who comments on the 6th of January, lying again and defending the protesters. The three children refuse to respond, but Azevedo says the fear of the consequences was evident. He says he just found a scrap of audio not included in the film in which Eric Trump laments, “January 6 was really bad”, using slang that confirms his reputation as the family simpleton.
This Monday (18) begins the trial of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. He was indicted on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify and hand over documents on January 6th. Afraid of arrest, Bannon backtracked this month and offered to testify, but in federal court, it was too late. Who knows if Bannon, out of self-interest, will reveal what is so difficult to obtain from the family most destructive to American democracy: the truth.
