We chat with Jeff Hann, director of The Coffee Man screening at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival in July. The Coffee Man follows Sasa Sestic’s journey to the 2015 World Barista Championships and his pursuit for the perfect cup of coffee.
How did you meet Sasa and why did you want to tell his story?
I met Sasa in Canberra through my brother in-law Mick. We had lunch together and talked about doing some filming around the coffee world and exploring direct trade coffee in countries such as Ethiopia. I then asked Roland if he wanted to get involved and he said “YES”. The filming evolved from a film about the coffee world, to a character Journey and we saw the obsession and passion for coffee that Sasa has and loved the way it came across on the camera, therefore we wanted to follow him and tell his story as we believe he’s an inspirational person, especially in the coffee scene.
You guys did a lot of travelling in the documentary – What was the most challenging aspect of travelling and filming?
We got to travel to some amazing parts of the world with this film. Biggest challenge were not having enough time in one location. As an example: In Ethiopia, we’d spend 10 hours in a car driving on crazy bumpy dirt roads, dodging goats and people and then have 30 minutes at a coffee farm. So we really needed to think on our feet to manage to get the shots we needed to tell the story, interviews etc and there was only the two of us, so this was the biggest challenge. The other big challenge was battery power. We carried around 15 camera batteries as some locations didn’t have power access and the run-&-gun style shooting needed back-ups of batteries and just about back-ups of everything else because we didn’t have the time to plan or prepare.
It was a nice touch having Sasa’s daughter narrate the educational parts of the doco… was she keen to be involved?
Sasa’s Daughter was excited to be involved. The family aspect of the film is something that came out more and more in the editing phase and after interviewing Ana we saw that she was talented and had a great voice. This ended up working very well for someone who’s never done any voice training etc.
How did you fund this project?
At the start, the project was self-funded, however as the project grew we managed to partner with certain companies in the Coffee industry to help finish the film. Without them this film wouldn’t have been possible. We can’t thank them enough.
How much coffee did you drink during the production? Were you over coffee by the end of it or did it make you love it even more?
We drank stupid amounts of coffee throughout the production. I can’t speak for Roland, but I turned into a little coffee nerd during the making of the film and now drink and appreciate coffee completely differently to how I did beforehand. Visiting coffee regions and seeing how it’s farmed and processed and talking to these people changed the way I see it, in a good way! It’s good to appreciate the things we can take for granted back home and see the amount of effort that’s involved in a cup of coffee.
The milk mule scene is hilarious.
It’s a favourite of ours too. Roland wasn’t into the idea of smuggling milk, but it ended up as a great scene in the film and breaking down the 4th wall.
How did Sasa, Betti and their daughter respond to the documentary after viewing it for the first time?
We showed a rough cut (90% finished film) to the family, including Sasa’s parents and it was a little scary, especially as it’s such a personal story and the main thing we wanted to do was to tell an honest story, warts and all. There were tears throughout and they loved it, so that a huge weight of our backs knowing that they loved the film that we’d created.
What is one piece of advice would you give new documentary filmmakers?
Build trust with your talent and spend as much time with them as possible. Listen to them and don’t always have a camera in their faces. Know that the story is much more important that anything else. Never be scared of changing your story or letting the story take it’s own direction. You get very attached and sometimes you need to let go or have an open mind. Never give up on your dream and make sure you bring a great team of people together as you can’t do it on your own.
The Coffee Man will screen at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival in July.