Posted in: Disney, Interview, Movies | Tagged: disney, more than robots, movies

More Than Robots: Director Gillian Jacobs On COVID19 & Overall Story

When More Than Robots first starts, you think you know exactly where it is going. This will be another feel-good documentary about a bunch of cool kids building robots. That is until you find out that the film starts in January 2020, and you know that COVID is right around the corner. As the deadline for these kids creeps closer, a deadline in March, you know what will happen, and it does. More Than Robots goes in a very different direction that shows how these kids trained to look at a problem and learn how to solve it with minimal sources and help from adults were presented with the issues of COVID-19 happening around them. We got the chance to speak to director Gillian Jacobs, and we asked her about the sudden change in the documentary, and if she felt, even with that sudden change, that she got to tell the story, she set out to tell when filming started in January 2020.

"That's a great question, Jacobs explained. "Yes, I think so because the essence of it is really about these kids and who they are as people, how this competition has influenced them, but also just who they are. I think that's still there. When I first started this, I was asking them to tell me about this competition, and they would say it's more than robots. But they wouldn't explain it to me. They wouldn't tell me what it meant. 

"But I really learned what that meant in the course of making this film and seeing all of them and the way they responded," she continued. "To me, that is the essence of this. And so, even though everything changed, the core of who they were, remained the same. I hadn't thought about it in this way, but yes, I think you're right that the same essential message is still there."

You can watch our full interview with Jacobs below and check out More Than Robots on Disney+ now.

Disney+ and Supper Club present "More than Robots," a feature-length documentary that follows four teams of teenagers from around the world as they prepare for the 2020 FIRST® Robotics Competition. Viewers will get to know teams from Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Chiba, Japan, as they work towards the goal of taking their unique designs all the way to the highly competitive global championships. Although they are faced with overcoming challenges along the way, such as having limited resources within their community or putting everything on hold because of a worldwide pandemic, the kids persevere and learn that there is a lot more to the competition than just robots. "More Than Robots" is directed by Gillian Jacobs in her feature-length documentary directorial debut. Award-winning Supper Club founders Jason Sterman, Brian McGinn, and David Gelb are the producers. Lucasfilm's Michael Garcia and Christine Beebe serve as executive producers, with Jacqui Lopez as co-executive producers.

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