ÇWhen filmmakers Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick met Dylan Farrow in January 2018, they were skeptical about how much could be added to the record recorded in the public memory of their family’s infamous division, probably the most publicized and examined case of alleged incest in history. America’s recent. The directors behind some of the decade’s most cutting-edge documentaries on sexual assault and the cultures that allow and encourage it, including On The Record, The Hunting Ground and The Invisible War, were familiar with the general features of Dylan’s story: in August From 1992, at the age of seven, she claims that her foster father, superstar director Woody Allen, sexually assaulted her in an attic. Allen denied molesting Dylan and launched the charges – in public and in a bitter and highly examined custody case in 1993 against Dylan’s mother, Mia Farrow – as the machinations of a scorned woman (Mia had recently discovered Allen’s sexual relationship with adopted daughter Soon- Yi Previn, then 21).
In 2018, the story had a polarized cementation in public memory: either you believed Allen, as much of Hollywood seemed until the #MeToo movement reduced interest in working with him, or you believed Dylan and, by extension, Mia . But as they listened to Dylan reminisce about her memories and her ongoing trauma – an experience she publicly shared in an open letter in 2014, then in a 2017 rehearsal in the Los Angeles Times, then in a 2018 television interview with CBS – the film -makers realized that there was much more to the story than the justified narrative he-said, bitterly-said that they absorbed in the 1990s.
The two were impressed with “how strong [Dylan’s] The interview was, “Dick told the Guardian, and that she was willing to speak” how so much of her life had unfolded in public and was debated in public, and how she was discredited. ” Still, the pair was unsure if enough could be found to warrant a deeper analysis of a notorious case, until lead investigator Amy Herdy obtained the judicial files of the 1993 custody trial, with a wealth of details never before. visas. “As it became more obvious that there were a lot of things that Amy Herdy was finding, we wanted to continue exploring,” Ziering told the Guardian.
The result is Allen v Farrow, a lucid and thoroughly researched four-part HBO documentary series that analyzes extensive trails of documentation and personal trauma with a fine-tooth comb. Over the course of four hours, Ziering and Dick analyze Herdy’s mountain of evidence, from archival photos to court documents, police investigation files to countless social worker notes. The series includes lengthy first-person interviews with Dylan and Mia, speaking publicly about their 12-year-old romantic and creative partner for the first time in decades, as well as Dylan’s brother, New York journalist Ronan Farrow, and numerous cultural aspects, psychological and legal experts.
The guiding intention was “to come back and say, let’s unpack this, let’s understand what’s going on and let’s understand the prejudices we have as a culture and individual that prevent incest survivors from speaking out and speaking,” said Dick. Although, at least in the series, they do not explicitly lead to a conclusion for Allen v Farrow, the centralization of Dylan’s story almost blows up the verdict of his investigation. (Allen and Previn did not respond to several requests to participate.)
The film is a patient and open witness to Dylan’s account, although Ziering, Dick and Herdy were clear that doing so did not preclude investigative rigor. “It wasn’t a collaboration or anything like that or her family,” said Ziering. “It was really an investigation,” whose meticulousness eventually convinced reluctant members of the Farrow family to participate.
Mia was particularly reluctant to revisit the past and only agreed to participate after specific requests from Dylan. “This is not something she was looking forward to going back and revisiting, for a variety of reasons,” said Ziering, “and it is not something that she felt comfortable in publicly trusting her story, because she has had a very unfair press presentation so far” . It was Herdy, a veteran trauma reporter who led investigations into the duo’s previous films, who first introduced Dylan to the directors, and whose discovery of previously unseen court documents convinced Dylan and the filmmakers to pursue the series.
“I started my investigation with Dylan, treating her like an object of investigation and saying, ‘Okay, I need names, I need details, I need dates – if you say it happened, help me find the evidence'” . Said Herdy. The search took Herdy to Mia’s basement, where she found photos and videos sent to the court; she then obtained and looked through thousands of pages of court records (“stabbing the eye”), as well as hours of telephone conversations between Allen and Mia (he started recording it, then she recorded it; excerpts taken from court evidence is reproduced throughout the series), and separate police records of investigations in Connecticut and New York.
Several revelations seem condemnatory to Allen’s argument – several child psychologists discredit the re-traumatizing methods used in the 1993 Yale-New Haven study, long cited by Allen’s advocates as proof of his innocence, which claimed that Dylan, seven years old, demonstrated “inconsistencies” over nine interviews and cast doubt on Mia’s intentions. Recently discovered files reveal that the New York social worker in charge of investigating the case believed Dylan’s testimony and was dismissed under suspicion (a judge later concluded that it was an unfair dismissal and he was reinstated).
The series’ most explosive addition to the record are home videos, known but not yet seen by the public, taken from Dylan by Mia in the days after the alleged assault, in which she describes (according to Mia, without warning) what happened in the attic. The footage – Dylan, with a child’s vocabulary, gesturing how “daddy” touched his “private parts” – is graphic and disturbing, and included only at the specific request of the now adult Dylan. “The fact that we had this tape was a decision made by an adult woman, allowing us to see that very painful, personal and private part of her childhood self,” said Herdy. The series portrays several child psychologists, not associated with the case, watching the footage; all attesting to its consistency with its experience with children who report sexual abuse.
After months of studying detail after detail, and interweaving disparate lines of investigations, Herdy saw a clear picture: “When you look at the records, the documents, the police investigation and the investigations of the social workers, and this is plural, combined with the statements of the guys we have – all of this, in my opinion, points to the fact that Woody Allen absolutely molested Dylan. ”
Allen continues to deny all charges. “Although the Farrow family is cynically using the opportunity offered by the Time’s Up movement to repeat this discredited claim, it does not make it more true today than it was in the past,” he said in response to Dylan’s 2018 interview with CBS. “I never molested my daughter – as all investigations were completed a quarter of a century ago.”
While the filmmakers quote generously from their 2020 memories, Apropos of Nothing, the series presents Farrow’s side in an overwhelming way. The fourth episode briefly addresses the accusations against Mia of physical abuse, bullying and coaching, made by the only two brothers who refused to participate, Previn and Moses. In a 2018 blog post, Moses accused Mia of slapping him repeatedly as a child, dragging brothers with physical and emotional disabilities down the stairs and brainwashing them. (In the same blog post, he accused Dylan and Mia of lying and claimed that the train set she remembered fixing during the alleged assault was an added detail to make her story more credible; a 1992 police sketch of the attic featured on series includes a defined rail model). Mia Farrow denied Moses’ allegations to the New York Times, as did Ronan Farrow, who rejected them again in the series. Dylan Farrow, in a statement posted on Twitter, called them “part of a larger effort to discredit and distract from my attack”.
In a 2018 interview with New York magazine, Previn (along with Allen, who was present for much of the interview) said that “[Mia] took advantage of the #MeToo movement and displayed Dylan as a victim, ”and accused his adoptive mother of bullying and extreme favoritism. “It’s hard for anyone to imagine, but I really can’t seem to have a pleasant memory,” she said of her time with Mia (Farrow and her other children have also denied allegations of abuse).
Ziering, Dick and Herdy said that these allegations were pursued and investigated like any other in the series. “We didn’t run away from anything,” said Ziering. “If there is anything there, we will report. So we analyzed all of that and presented what we thought was appropriate and what we were legally capable of. And if we had discovered something different, we would have presented it. ”Herdy said she sought the claims through interviews with relatives and all the living siblings, except Previn and Moses, who declined the interviews, and found that records of“ several investigations by several different agencies indicated that Mia was a very loving mother. , attentive and caring “.
“I found no evidence to support these claims, said Herdy. “I found growing evidence to contest these claims. The idea that Dylan’s story was trained as “a vengeful act by a troubled woman” “is not reflected in the records,” she added. “This is not reflected in the interviews, it is not reflected anywhere else than [Allen’s] PR machine. “
Allen v Farrow’s saga is likely to remain divisive, not just because of the benefit of the doubt afforded Allen by his legendary – though, given Amazon’s recent withdrawal from its cinema contract, decline – cultural status. “When you have a public figure who has been revered for decades, and that reverence gives him a lot of privileges, it also allows us to make assumptions about other people who now, in retrospect, look really wrong and unfair and have serious consequences for their lives,” said Ziering.
The filmmakers said they hoped for a “reckoning” on Dylan’s history and management for nearly two decades, as well as greater recognition and willingness to tackle incest cases. “Taking these cases and exposing them to sunlight will cure the infection and I think it will help people heal,” said Herdy. “It is important for people to realize that they are not alone. I think a whole community of survivors will be inspired by this series. “